The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 16 series are the last remnants of the pre-RTX era when all GPUs were branded under the “GTX” lineup. It’s been more than a year since we last saw a graphics card in this lineup and that too was a low-end design, the GeForce GTX 1630. But starting Q1 2024, the GeForce GTX 16 series is expected to enter the discontinuation phase which means these GPUs will no longer be produced.
The information comes from the Chinese Board Channel Forums where it is reported that NVIDIA has announced plans to discontinue its last GeForce GTX family. The GeForce GTX 16 GPU family includes a range of graphics cards such as the GTX 1660 SUPER, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660, GTX 1650 Ti, GTX 1650 SUPER, and the GTX 1630. These are very popular graphics cards in the mainstream and low-end segment as they are affordable and can provide decent gaming performance in eSports titles & older games.
However, these GPUs lack lots of features that have now become the staple of the NVIDIA GeForce ecosystem such as Ray Tracing, DLSS, AV1, and much more. These GPUs feature the same Turing GPU architecture which was incorporated by the first RTX family, the RTX 20 series but due to perf per dollar limitations, NVIDIA had to cut back on the feature support for these entry-level cards. You can enable ray tracing on these cards but you won’t get optimal performance since they lack RT cores.
AIBs will continue to sell these cards until their inventories run dry and you will be able to see some nice deals on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 16 series family at various retailers too. NVIDIA will introduce a new GeForce GTX 3050 6 GB variant to cover the sub-$ $200 US segment in early 2024.
NVIDIA GeForce 16 Series Specifications
GEFORCE RTX 2060 FE | GEFORCE GTX 1660 TI 6GB | GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB | GEFORCE GTX 1660 6GB | GEFORCE GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB | GEFORCE GTX 1650 4 GB | GEFORCE GTX 1630 4 GB | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Architecture (GPU) | TU106 | TU116-400 | TU116-300 | TU116-300 | TU116 | TU117 TU106 | TU117 |
CUDA Cores | 1920 | 1536 | 1408 | 1408 | 1280 | 896 | 512 |
Tensor Cores | 240 | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A |
RT cores | 30 | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A | N / A |
Texture Units | 120 | 96 | 88 | 88 | 80 | 56 | 32 |
ROPs | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
Base Clock | 1365 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1530 MHz | 1530 MHz | TBD | 1485 MHz | TBD |
GPU Boost | 1680 MHz | 1770 MHz | 1785 MHz | 1785 MHz | TBD | 1665 MHz | 1800 MHz |
Memory | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR6? |
Memory Bus | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit |
Memory Clocks | 14 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 8 Gbps | 12 |
L2 cache | 3 MB | 1.5 MB | 1.5 MB | 1.5 MB | 1.5 MB | 1.5 MB | 1.5 MB |
TDP | 160 W | 120W | 125W | 120W | 100W | 75W | >75W |
Transistors | 10.8 billion | 6.6 billion | 6.6 billion | 6.6 billion | 6.6 billion | 4.7 billion | 4.7 billion |
Die Size | 445 mm² | 284mm2 | 284mm2 | 284mm2 | 284mm2 | 200mm2 | 200mm2 |
Price | $349 | $279 | $229 | $229 | $159 | $149 | $119? |