EVGA SC GTX 660 vs 660ti

[Aexl]

I think you're making a good decision with the GTX 660, I was going to go for the Ti too but if you check the benchmarks, the difference isn't *THAT* major between the two for £60 anyway. There is obviously a difference in performance, I just don't think it justifies the extra £60 spend.

Completely changed my mind and am going for a 7870, someone in this thread mentioned one and I just had to go check it out

[Thorsson]

According to the Techspot tests BF3 was 60fps at 1920x1200 on a 660Ti and 51 on a 660. Skyrim was 69 to 65. Borderlands 2 was CPU limited so only 1 fps difference there (but if you look here you can see what the Ti brings to the party). On the latter you can also see the impressive ACIII performance, and that they got 74fps out of Skyrim.

One more article that compares 660 and 660Ti performance at 1920x1200. You can make your own mind up, clearly the Ti has some benefits at 1920x1200, but it's a moot point whether it's worth the extra money.

Ah I see you're now going for the 7870; well some of the above gives you good comparisons to that card too. I couldn't see any real edge for it over the 660.

[Aexl]

According to the Techspot tests BF3 was 60fps at 1920x1200 on a 660Ti and 51 on a 660. Skyrim was 69 to 65. Borderlands 2 was CPU limited so only 1 fps difference there (but if you look here you can see what the Ti brings to the party). On the latter you can also see the impressive ACIII performance, and that they got 74fps out of Skyrim.

One more article that compares 660 and 660Ti performance at 1920x1200. You can make your own mind up, clearly the Ti has some benefits at 1920x1200, but it's a moot point whether it's worth the extra money.

Ah I see you're now going for the 7870; well some of the above gives you good comparisons to that card too. I couldn't see any real edge for it over the 660.

At stock then you're probably right but I'll be overclocking the 7870 to the best of my ability and everything i've read points towards the 7870 being a better overclocker than the 660.

[Willzzz]

Overclocking is pretty variable, from reviews I have seen there is not much between the 660 and the 7870 in terms of overclocking potential.

The latest 7870 review on techpowerup shows a 10.8% overclock on a powercolor 7870, although they've had as high as 20.2% from a top end MSI card (£216 on Scan). While 20% is impressive you could almost afford a 7950 for that much.
Their MSI 660 achieved an overclock of 15.5% and while that's not quite 20% that's from a much more affordable model (£166).

Which 7870 are you looking at?

[Aexl]

Overclocking is pretty variable, from reviews I have seen there is not much between the 660 and the 7870 in terms of overclocking potential.

The latest 7870 review on techpowerup shows a 10.8% overclock on a powercolor 7870, although they've had as high as 20.2% from a top end MSI card (£216 on Scan). While 20% is impressive you could almost afford a 7950 for that much.
Their MSI 660 achieved an overclock of 15.5% and while that's not quite 20% that's from a much more affordable model (£166).

Which 7870 are you looking at?

The Gigabyte 1100 model

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...787oc-2gd.html

[Willzzz]

It's a good card, but don't expect it to be noticeably faster than the 660. Both cards have slightly different strengths, but on average the difference is so slight you probably won't notice.

[HalloweenJack]

the 7870 overclocked pitcairn cards seem to match the 7950`s , my own pcs+ 7870 1150/1250 gets

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5369078

X2262 in 3dmark 11

[Thorsson]

I'm always a little wary of using synthetic benchmarks as a comparison; AMD & NVidia found ways to boost performance there years ago, which has nothing to do with real world performance. You really need to look at performance in actual games.

From what I can see, there are two issues here; is an OC 7870 really close to 7950 performance, and how do the 7950 and 660Ti (very similar prices) compare? Let's take the latter first. I went back to here and as you can see the 660Ti absolutely trounced the 7950 in AC3 and is noticeably better in Skyrim. The 7950 only has a real edge in Hitman Absolution. This confirms my overall impression that AMD often has an edge where it doesn't really matter, but has some big holes in its driver cover.

I then found a review of the Gigabyte card which had comparisons to the 7950. This seems to show the 7870OC in a good light compared to the 7950. However when you read the conclusion it's hard not to agree:

At the out-of-box overclock, the GIGABYTE R787OC-2GD provided the exact same gaming experience as a reference AMD Radeon 7950, which at a first glance seems like a great thing given that the expectation for the Piticarn (78xx) class of GPUs is to be "inferior" to Tahiti (79xx) based GPUs. When pricing is factored in, the two cards continue to be in a dead heat, such that if you were buying a card based upon today’s pricing, the Tahiti based AMD Radeon HD 7950 would be the superior option due to its higher number of stream processors which could give the card more longevity in your rig.

If the price point of the GIGABYTE R787OC was lower than the AMD Radeon HD 7950, then it would be a worthy contender for your money, but until then, there are better options for your hard earned dollars in this price range. It just makes sense at this current pricing to aim for the Radeon HD 7950, instead of a highly overclocked HD 7870. The Radeon HD 7950 would have more room to grow with overclocking, while the 7870 is literally at the top of its performance potential already.

Hexus review of the card says that it's a bit long and a bit noisy (some reviewers differ on this suggesting samples may vary), but agree that it keeps the card cool. There are OC's 660s and 660Tis too - in fact Gigabyte do one; here's how that compares to the 7950.

I think it's clear that the 660Ti will beat the 7870OC handsomely, but it's around £40 more expensive. So I tried to find a good 660 card at around the same price. I used Scan for this, so you may find it cheaper, but I picked the Asus GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC at £185.59, due to reviews saying that the Asus cooling solution was the quietest and most effective.

Guru3D had it outperforming the 7950 in most tests.

Anyway I hope that's some food for thought.

[HalloweenJack]

think you need to check your links - as that thinkcomputers.org link has the 7970 (dark blue line 81.85fps) beating the asus gtx 660 oc (purple line 63.3 fps) in skyrim


and heres anand`s take:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6276/n...pler-family/12

[Thorsson]

Me misreading. The Anand numbers are quite interesting, especially on BF3.

[Willzzz]

the 7870 overclocked pitcairn cards seem to match the 7950`s , my own pcs+ 7870 1150/1250 gets

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5369078

X2262 in 3dmark 11

And according to Hexus the 660 at just factory OC speeds achieves X2328 (although obviously the 3770 helps!)
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...0-myst/?page=3

The point is that regardless of which card is quicker at each benchmark, the difference is always going to be pretty insignificant.
The 7870 is the only Radeon card that doesn't have a price/performance lead over Nvidia imo.

[Cheapy]

Just be careful which drivers the reviews are using as AMD made some improvements with 12.11 especially with BF3 benchmarks, see below.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...1-benchmarked/

Also worth a read is the link in this thread to techspot review comparing all the cards on same driver.
http://forums.hexus.net/graphics-car...-310-61-a.html

If you want a 7870 the MSI dark knight seems decent. Often comes on Scans today only for £172.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...dvi-i-hdmi-mdp

[Thorsson]

The Techspot results are interesting, but I like the way Tech Report tests the best - it gives a much better idea how the card will actually perform.

[xpygmy]

I would go for the 660ti then overclock it so it can get the performance of a 670.