Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Review

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=647

games I care about the difference is minimal

 

Exactly. Everything Nvidia has done so far indicates that GK110 will never become a consumer card. I mean think of it this way: where would the return be in writing a DirectX driver suite for it? In what way would it be worthwhile for them to do so? It's OpenGL for the workstation, OpenCL and CUDA for compute tasks. Why bother going to extra expense for something you won't make as much return on as selling to the professional market for?

 

greedy gits!

 

Or in shorter form :
Why would NVIDIA sell the hard to produce GK110 for 600€ as a consumer product (GeForce) when they can sell it as a computing card (Tesla) for 2000€+ ?

 

This is pretty much the reasoning of theirs. But if they ever do release it, it'll be the GTX7xx series.

 

I love the size of the Zotac card

 

Im guessing that next gen will be when my GTX480 will be behind the mid-range cards, it seems.

 

I understand this card is a 6xx series but why not include the 560 Ti since it is one of the best budget cards on the market and it's one that a lot of us may still own.

Little bit of disappointment there.

Great review as usual though. Bit-Tech > All

 

That could be as soon as the 650 launches. It all depends on how much NV cripple it.

 

"More of the same in Batman: Arkham City, where a £200 Radeon HD 7870 2GB outpaces both overclocked 660 Tis."

"As we noted in our original review, the GTX 660 Ti's memory/ROP deficit is highlighted in Aliens vs. Predator. This game thrives on gobs of meaty bandwidth, which the competing Radeons have in spades."

"Battlefield 3, set to Ultra quality, is generally playable at a 1080p resolution. Go higher - and we're thinking of three screens here - and a single GTX 660 Ti board won't cut it."

"Crysis 2 may not have lived up to the expectations set by its predecessor, but with the DX11 patch and high-res textures, it's a gorgeous-looking game. Effortlessly smooth at 1,920x1,080 but rather sticky at 2,560x1,600, GeForces have the upper hand on Radeons here."

"Benchmarking DiRT: Showdown with all the bells and whistles on leads to one clear winner: Radeons. A Radeon HD 7870, benched at 2,560x1,600, is almost as fast as the EVGA at 1,920x1,080. Horses for courses and GPUs for games, eh?"

"We've increased the visual quality for Just Cause 2. Even so, modern cards chew through it with relish. EVGA's performance is solid here."

"Another solid showing in Total War: Shogun 2. EVGA's card easily outpaces the competing Radeon HD 7870 and even beats out a more-expensive Radeon HD 7950."

"The performance available from GeForce and Radeon graphics cards can vary wildly between games, and the same is true in other computing scenarios. We've added the increasingly-popular LuxMark benchmark to our suite to compare the GPGPU capabilities of each graphics card, and the Radeons are clear winners in this regard.

NVIDIA Kepler-derived cards make hard work of this OpenCL-based test. A Radeon HD 7870 is up to 3x as fast as the GeForce GTX 660 Ti."

Not as clear cut IRL..

Also, where are the gtx 580 results? These are going for about £200 used on ebay

 

Do Not Track, have you heard of it?

Also, the HD 7870 review had graphs for:


AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 1280MB
AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 5770 1GB
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB

GTX 660 Ti:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 2GB
MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Power Edition
Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB amp! Editon
AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB with Boost
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB
AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB

Also notice arma2 is gone from the benchs.

 

1. totally offtopic.
2.

3. Do Not Track is pretty much US specific thing (hell, it even came out as a result of people complaining to FTC in US), so even if US makes it a law, it is absolutely irrelevant for a UK website like bit-tech.

 

*deleted*

Can't be bothered.

 

They why did 480 become a consumer card - it's the same huge heavy cuda monster, same die size/power consumption/memory bus as GK110?

I'll answer - because ATI provided some decent competition, currently nvidia's mid range chip is fast enough to compete with everything ATI produce so they haven't bothered with anything bigger, just used the mid range kepler, upped the prices and raked in the money.

 

I enjoyed the original post far more

 

I think they priced it in the 250 because Nvidia can't deliver enough cards for the price of 200. Do I make sense? If I look at the online shops today the delivery times are dropped from a day or two to one or two weeks now. Only some close partners have some more in stock. The Gigabyte and Zotac is nowhere to be found here.

I hope the price will drop 10 to 30 euro. to just make the 60 to 90 euro difference compared to the 670 a real hot item.
If you are coming from the 460 or 470 range then the 660 and 670 is a real good upgrade to do. I even think that the 660ti is a real winner in the 1080p range. The scores are 1 to 3 frames off compared to the 670. spending 40 for a 2 frame gain with the 670. no sir!

 

Well i guess i'll just wait for the 660, over £200 is just too much for me.

 

Looking into my startlingly accurate crystal ball, I can see the non-Ti 660 being a poor choice unless it can match the second hand price of a 580, because it will be a fair bit slower. The only advantages will be power consumption and warranty (and possibly noise), performance will be competitive but ultimately better speed will be achievable for less money.

 

Firstly with only 4 games tested you can choose which games favour Nvidia or Amd Hardware and ultimately which card is going to be shown in a favourable light. (Simple Propaganda)

If you are going to run a test you need to choose neutral games were neither card has a massive advantage, and if you are going to choose a game which favours Red/Blue team it needs to be levelled out with both Nvidia and Amd having a game were its hardware excels. (Skyrim/ARMA OA)

The test is clearly in favour of Nvidia hardware. Skyrim runs better on Nvidia cards full stop. At 1920 *1080 the 660Ti 192bit beats the 7970 GHz 384 bit!
I know Skyrim is a popular game and I play it all the time but it has no place in a benchmark test. If Bit-Tech really needs to benchmark Skyrim then it should be carried out with a full install of the Texture Pack Combiner (10+ Gig of HD Textures and Meshes) which makes the game look like a true PC game and not a port.

Dirt 3 should be removed. So what if it’s DX 11. Any game that runs in triple FPS is pointless for a test. Playing the game with a 7850 or 690 will be indistinguishable to the naked eye (if you bought a 120 Hz monitor over an IPS monitor you have my sympathies).

If Skyrim is going to be tested than ARMA OA should be reintroduced in place of Dirt 3 for objectivity. (ARMA OA = AMD Advantage/ Skyrim = Nvidia Advantage).
After all ARMA OA was the only PC game on the benchmark before it was removed (CUI BONO, Nvidia), the rest are console ports.

So the GTX 660 Ti 2GB gets 89% and a value mark of 26/30.
AMD 7950 3GB Boost gets 79% and a value mark of 19/30.

The Amd 7950 boost was reviewed the same day and strangely it was not overclocked (WHY).
Both cards use boost tech but only the Nvidia was overclocked.

If you have £250 to spend on a GPU and you are thinking of the GTX 660 Ti 2GB forget about it. 2GB of VRAM is not future proof and 192 Bit interface will cripple the card at High Res.
4K monitors will be with us in 2013 for reasonable money and this card will struggle at best.
Google ‘The 4K Graphics Card Shootout’ and you will see why you need at least 3GB Vram.

For £250 you can pick up a SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY RADEON HD 7950 OC 3 GB (11196-10-40G) which runs at 950 MHz. It uses the 7970 PCB and takes 8pin + 6pin power connections not 6pin + 6pin that most 7950s use. It has Dual Bios for overclocking and also shows up the full 2048 stream processors in GPUZ but only 1792 are available. I’m sure a future BIOS update will unlock it to a full 7970 as it is built on a 7970 PCB. Make sure it’s the brown PCB (11196-10-40G). Check pixmania.co.uk

I have my 7950 OC 3 GB (11196-10-40G) Core at 1100mhz, Memory at 1250mhz on stock voltage 1.082Vusing the sapphire Trixx and Msi afterburner overclocking utility which is fool proof.
With the voltage raised to 1.2v I have the core at 1200 MHz, memory at 1500 MHz with Temps at 72c. This card is superior to any GTX660 ti.

Bit-Tech.net really need to be more objective in their reviews.