Enter the GTX 16-series. Nvidia stripped away the Ray Tracing and AI tensor cores from their Turing architecture—essentially removing the expensive bells and whistles—and focused purely on raw rasterization performance. The result was a streamlined, efficient, and affordable chip.
It is often half the price of a modern RTX 4060 while still delivering stable 1080p results for students and casual creators AliExpress . gtx 1660
In 2026, the 1660 can still push decent frame rates in many modern titles if you’re willing to drop settings to Medium. It remains highly capable for esports, where it often outperforms newer budget cards like the RTX 3050 6GB in older DX11 titles. Enter the GTX 16-series