GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review: Nvidia's Trickle-Down Keplernomics

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

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?

Benchmark Results: Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is notoriously demanding, and, after much driver work, seems to favor AMD's cards (that certainly wasn't the case when this title launched).

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti beats AMD's Radeon HD 7870 at 1680x1050, achieving performance similar to the Radeon HD 7950.

Based on our frame rate-over-time charts, however, certain sections of this benchmark appear platform-limited.

At 1920x1080, it becomes necessary to drop the detail preset from Very High to High, though we do have enough performance reserves to turn on 4x MSAA. Now the graphics cards are clearly bottlenecked, though, and AMD's Radeon HD 7870 ekes past the GTX 660 Ti.

The move to 2560x1600 forces us to revisit our settings, and we turn off 4x MSAA in favor of AAA. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti again takes a spot ahead of the Radeon HD 7870, though both cards are quite a bit slower than the GeForce GTX 670 and Radeon HD 7970.

Don Woligroski
205 Comments Comment from the forums
  • 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
  • crisan_tiberiu
    *edit, costs 100$ less then GTX 580.
    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.
    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.
    Reply
  • verbalizer
    nice card, not OVERLY impressed...
    BUT THE PRICE...!
    c'mon SON let's be real here......
    ridiculous @ $300 beans..
    Reply
  • hellfire24
    waiting for a price cut down.who's with me?
    Reply
  • 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....
    that's depressing but I understand nVidia has designated GTX 6 series as a gaming cards but c'mon SON.!!!
    ridiculous once again..
    Reply
  • 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 lower
    Reply