After the release of the "Super" RX 2060, 2070 and 2080 GPUs, NVIDIA is back with a pair of updated graphics cards: the GeForce GTX 1660 Super and the GTX 1650 Super.

GTX 1660 Super

The GTX 1660 Super is a lightweight upgrade: like the GTX 1660 it replaces, it's a board with 1408 CUDA cores, with a base clock of 1,530 MHz and a boost clock of 1,785 MHz. In fact, every NVIDIA specification released is identical, until you get to memory.

The GTX 1660 Super still has 6 GB of video memory - enough for a card of its class - but it's GDDR6, instead of GDDR5, and its data transmission speed is 14 Gbps, instead of 8 Gbps. This increases memory bandwidth from 192 GB/sec to 336 GB/sec, which is actually higher than the GTX 1660 Ti and on par with the original RTX 2060.

This increase in bandwidth is significant, but it's hard to tell what impact it will have on gaming and productivity activities. While RTX Supers had important differences such as increasing core count and clock speed, NVIDIA suggests that the RAM changes alone will provide a similar increase. A chart provided suggests that a 10-20 percent increase could be achieved compared to the GTX 1660.

GTX 1650 Super

While the GTX 1660 Super is best described as a minor overhaul, the same cannot be said of the GTX 1650 Super. In fact, it looks like on paper it will offer the biggest Super update to date.

The GTX 1650 Super surpasses its predecessor in every feature. It offers 43 percent more CUDA cores at 1280, with a base clock of 1,530 MHz and a boost clock of 1,725 MHz, compared to the original base of 1,485 MHz and 1,665 MHz boost. The 4 GB of RAM on the card remains, but has been upgraded to GDDR6 at 12 Gbps, bringing the total memory bandwidth to 192 GB/s, an increase of 50 percent over the original. These improvements stem from the necessary increase in energy consumption: the new board is called TGP ("total graphics power") of 100 W, from 75 W and NVIDIA states that the GTX 1650 Super would ideally match a required power supply of 350 W , as opposed to the previous recommendation of 300 W.

These changes are strangely huge: the GTX 1650, a GPU capable of 3 TFLOP, is being supplanted by a Super 4.4 TFLOP. This is a more significant difference than the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti, not to mention the Super models.

NVIDIA's press release states that "the new boards offer up to 2 times the performance of the GTX 10 series GPU from the previous generation and up to 50 percent more than the original 16 GTX series." Both of these comparisons are likely to refer to the GTX 1650 Super: it has about twice the power of the latest generation GTX 1050 and about 50 percent more power than the GTX 1650.

At first glance, the GTX 1650 Super is an exciting update. It's a cheap 1080p board that will likely outperform the GTX 1060 in many games, a comparison that will only improve when games are increasingly optimized for the more modernTuringarchitecture shared by the 16 series more expensive GPUs. However, NVIDIA did not achieve the same result with the GTX 1660 Super, which saw only one memory update compared to the GTX 1660. The marketing of these two very different Super cards is likely to create confusion among its users.

The GTX 1660 Super is available today for 229 dollars. The GTX 1650 Super will go on sale on November 22 with prices to be confirmed before launch. In a world where you can find an AMD RX 580 for 180 dollars, NVIDIA will have to be aggressive on price if it really wants to put pressure on its rival.