Upgrading from MSI Geforce GTX 660ti

[Annarin]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE:
Within the next 2-3 weeks. BUDGET RANGE: USD $300 to $450 After Rebates.

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT:
Gaming, music production.

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY:
MSI Geforce GTX Power Edition 660ti OC.
Thermaltake TR2 600W PSU.

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS:
(CPU)Intel Core i7 2600k @ 3.4GHz.
Asus Maximus Gene-Z Micro atx z68 mainboard.
8gb Gskill Ripjaws DDR3 Ram 1600.

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS:
Newegg.com

PARTS PREFERENCES:
None.

OVERCLOCKING:
Sometime in the next year or so but not initially.

SLI OR CROSSFIRE:
Within the next 2 years or so w/new PSU.

MONITOR RESOLUTION:
1680x1050

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
Need a card that is going to give me at least 60 fps or more for the majority of the time in Guild Wars 2 (which I'll be playing the most) and the upcoming Warcraft expansion. I also intend to get into Borderlands 2 a little. I prefer playing my games with ultra settings, maxed out AA and super sampling. I thought that the 660ti I purchased would make the cut when running at my 1680x1050 resolution, but it comes up short on FPS no matter which driver I download from nvidia. I guess the memory bandwidth of the card is holding it back. Looking for some graphics card suggestions based on my current system.

This caught my eye on newegg, but I want whatever has the best performance for my budget.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202001

Thanks in advance!

 

[Kamen_BG]

You want too much from your PC.Your GTX 660 Ti is a great card but you're just not using it right.It's unrealistic to expect a upper-mainstream card to max out games with super sampling enabled.That jsut won't happen.I suggest you stop using super sampling and start using MSAA and you'll be very satisfied with its performance.

And if you still want more just buy another GTX 660 Ti.

 

[Annarin]

Disabling super sampling doesn't have too much of an impact on how guild wars 2 runs with the 660ti. It still bottoms out at 18 or so fps consistently enough for me to not want to use it. I just want an upgrade because this card is barely 'not cutting it'. Two 660ti's is far out of my price range. The card doesn't have to run games at 60 fps all the time, I just don't want it dipping down into 28 fps unless its in a situation where there is 50 people on the screen then I don't care because I know most cards are going to take a dump at that point. 18 fps in unacceptable for this card at this resolution while just running around the open world in guild wars 2 questing.

 

[bigcyco1]

Simple answer the card your looking at is overkill the GTX 660 Ti consistently beats a 7950 at 1920 resolution and lower something is wrong with your card i suspect.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56090-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review-23.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Ti_Power_Edition/28.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/20

Quote:
"As it stands, AMD’s position correctly reflects their performance; the GTX 660 Ti is a solid and relatively consistent 10-15% faster than the 7870, while the 7950 is anywhere between a bit faster to a bit slower depending on what benchmarks you favor. Of course when talking about the 7950 the “anything but equal” maxim still applies here, if not more so than with the GTX 670. The GTX 660 Ti is anywhere 50% ahead of the 7950 and 25% behind it, and everywhere in between."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/21

 

[bigcyco1]

I would say if the 660 TI isn't enough for you get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202001 or look at GTX 660 Ti in SLI performance:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/inno3d-geforce-gtx-660-ti-ichill-review/24 basically two 660 TI kick the piss out any single gpu.

 

[Ohmybad]

keep/RMA your 660ti and buy a 1080p monitor.

 

[Annarin]

Is it possible that the pcie 2.0 slot on my mainboard is killing the performance of the 660ti?

 

[aqzfreak]

Hey there.

I just sold my two 560 GTXes and bought myself a "Gigabyte 670 GTX OC" It runs smooth, no lag in battlefield on ultra settings.

The reason for buying this card, was the superior cooling, and the ability to over-clock and still run a low temperatures.

But as far as i know, you could buy the 660ti and get almost the same performance if you over-clock, but it only has a 2 fan cooler solution

 

[captainblacko]

if you switched to a pci3.0 board im not 100% certain but you may need to switch to an ivy bridge CPU to get full use of the pci3.0 as the i7 2600k only supports pci2.0.

 

[mohit9206]

your 660ti is having some problem. get it replaced or something. 660ti is an amazing little card that CAN max out any game at 1600*1200 . so definately some specfic problem with your card which results in dips in fps

 

[Annarin]

Ran it through 3dmark on the free versions default settings and came out with a score of P8912. I don't think the graphics card has any kind of abnormal issue because thats one of the higher results and seems consistent with other peoples scores with similar systems.

The card is averaging about 43 fps now in guild wars 2, with all settings cranked as high as they will go. The issue is those dips in fps which typically occur when I turn the camera angle in the game at a moderate speed. I'm betting that has something to do with the memory bandwidth and I think that upgrading to a card with slightly more will fix all the issues I have. Which is why I'm looking at one of the factory OC gtx 570 by msi or asus or the sapphire radeon vapor-x 7970.

I do agree that the 660ti is an amazing card especially for the money, and it most of the games that people run benchmarks on it performs pretty darn well. But I'm really only concerned with 1-2 games (Guild Wars 2 / WoW) at the moment and will be playing only those for the next couple years.

I'm continuing to check out reviews and such through google, but I was hoping someone here might have first hand experience with these games in particular in order to throw out some card recommendations.

 

[mohit9206]

see you shouldn't be worried about the 660 ti having a 192 bit bus. only resolutions greater than 1920*1080 need more than 192 bit. so your fps dip in GW2 is due to 192 bit bus is highly unlikely. there could be some other issue which you need to try to find. dont waste your money on another card. am sure you could sort out the problem without needing to buy a more powerful card.

 

[Annarin]

The 660ti is gone and has been gone for a couple days. At this point I'm looking at cards in the $450 price range. The monitor will be upgraded to one capable of 1920x1080. In regards to your comments mrbeanladen, GW2 is a special game for some reason and not all and every graphics card maxes the game out at any resolution. I'm not asking for too much out of a graphics card and I didn't say it has to run at 60fps constantly. I'm fine playing at 40 but when it dips to 18 there is an issue, which is why I already sent the card back. The first post was made after clean driver installation and manually deleting every leftover nvidia folder from my pc and removing registry keys. I will gladly pay $150 dollars for 5-8 frames more in a game when its bottoming out at 18.

From everything I read although the 660ti SHOULD be plenty, at it's maximum overclock it only comes close to the reference speeds of the gtx 670, and whatever card I get next will be better than reference whether its nvida or AMD.

 

[mohit9206]

ok so get either gtx680 or hd7970. both will fulfill your requirements