GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review: Nvidia's Trickle-Down Keplernomics
Nvidia's Kepler architecture is finally manifest in a $300 graphics card, which the company says beats AMD's Radeon HD 7870 and challenges its more expensive 7950. Can this GK104-based mainstream card carve out a spot between the GCN-based competition?
Temperature And Noise
We don't like to compare reference coolers to aftermarket solutions. Unfortunately, with no reference GeForce GTX 660 Ti to represent Nvidia's latest, that's the situation we're faced with today. Without question, MSI's Twin Frozr-equipped solution is heavily modified, so we don't have an apples-to-apples comparison versus AMD's (infamously bad) reference coolers. Fortunately, AMD's add-in board partners swap those out just as often as Nvidia's do.
The GeForce GTX 660 Ti puts up numbers that are very similar to AMD's reference Radeon HD 7870. In this case, the more aggressively-tuned card suffers the disadvantage, as MSI’s model is rated for up to 190 W instead of the base specification's 150 W ceiling.
There aren't many other surprises to point out, except the penalty suffered by the Radeon HD 7950 with its "GHz Edition" firmware. The power-hungry GeForce GTX 580 is less than impressive, too.
This is where we see AMD's reference cooler compare poorly to the cards from MSI, Gigabyte, and Zotac. You'll simply have to remember that, should you snag an AMD board with aftermarket cooling, it'll perform differently.
Again, AMD's fans underperform. We've seen in stories like Radeon HD 7950 3 GB: Six Cards, Benchmarked And Reviewed just how much impact a more thoughtful implementation can have on acoustics and thermal output.
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game junky Hmm. I have been wanting to replace my 560 - this throws a wrench in the gears. I was sold on a ASUS 670 but I think I'll wait to compare specs with their 660ti - I just started ripping my BD collection so the additional RAM bandwidth might be worth the extra $100 but it is still an interesting option.Reply -
crisan_tiberiu so, this is basically a card that costs 40$ less then a GTX 580, consumes 100W less power then a gtx 580 and its 8% better...hmm, intresting.Reply -
rmpumper That's strange - on techpowerup review the 660Ti is above 7950's average performance.Reply -
outlw6669 game junkyI was sold on a ASUS 670 but I think I'll wait to compare specs with their 660ti.Asus' DCU2 Top ends up about 5% faster than stock, 8% slower than stock GTX 670 and still uses that excellent cooler.Reply
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_660_Ti_Direct_Cu_II/1.html
Still, the GTX 660Ti looks to be a decent card.
Not really fond of how nVidia keeps nerfing their memory bandwidth though.
Once prices drop a little, I could see it being an excellent mainstream card. -
verbalizer nice card, not OVERLY impressed...Reply
BUT THE PRICE...!
c'mon SON let's be real here......
ridiculous @ $300 beans.. -
felipetga I have been holding to upgrade my GTX 460 256bits. I wonder if this card will be bottlenecked by my C2Q 9550 @ 3.6ghz....Reply -
verbalizer GPGPU = Kepler = FAIL....Reply
that's depressing but I understand nVidia has designated GTX 6 series as a gaming cards but c'mon SON.!!!
ridiculous once again.. -
EzioAs Clearly we need more price cuts on the 660ti. I expect AMD to lower the prices even more, heck online retailers sell Radeon cards lower than the MSRP, making 7950 and 7870 even more budget friendly. It's still sad really to see mid-range cards battling at $300+. It used to be $250 and lowerReply