Reviews - EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti SuperClocked

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

£150-200 AMAZING CARD! £250+ jog on Nvidia....

Agreed!

However enough people seem to think it is quite good value at £250 and it seems will pay that amount,even though a GTX670 can be had for £280 to £290!!

On top of if you are the type who likes overclocking,the HD7950 3GB cards can be had for as low as £230 to £240 and people are getting over 30% overclocks with these too.

[davesom555]

I agree with all the comments - they are $300 in the states - that equals about £190 - not £250!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I hope this is not true:

http://videocardz.com/34220/geforce-...-september-6th

Supposedly it is the GTX660 non-TI NOT the GTX650TI which has 960 shaders!! That means the GTX660TI has 40% more shaders.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Willzzz]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-g...tes-confirmed/

Let's not get too hung up on theoretical performance, let's wait and see what the real life numbers are.

[AGTDenton]

As has been mentioned on Scans Facebook page and here, £250 is just too much. You couldnt even consider SLI, which was one of the attractions of previous generations of this model at a much lower price.

Those expecting prices to fall, I waited ages for the 500 series to fall but they just fluctuated, going higher then a little lower by which time the 600 series arrived so I'm just going for one of those now. But I am on the 200 series so I will see a huge jump.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-g...tes-confirmed/

Let's not get too hung up on theoretical performance, let's wait and see what the real life numbers are.

The GTX660TI has 40% more shaders than a GTX660. Moreover as all the Kepler cards are gaming optimised and have the same internal layout,you can make estimations of performance. The same could not be said of the GF100 against the GF104,GF110 against the GF114 or Tahiti against Pitcairn. The top end cards lost gaming efficiency due to compute considerations which is not the case with the GK104.

As has been mentioned on Scans Facebook page and here, £250 is just too much. You couldnt even consider SLI, which was one of the attractions of previous generations of this model at a much lower price.

Those expecting prices to fall, I waited ages for the 500 series to fall and they barely moved, infact they fluctuated so much going higher then a little lower by which time the 600 series arrived so I'm just going for one of those now. But I am on the 200 series so I will see a huge jump.

Get a GTX670 as in the long run it is worth it especially since you seem to keep your cards for a long time. Moreover,the reason the GTX660TI cards would stay up in price is by doing what you are doing and paying the price anyway despite not liking it. If you do not vote with your pocket,companies will vote for you instead.

Look at the GTX470 and GTX480 - they dropped in price since not enough people bought them. Its happened with both AMD and Nvidia in the past.

The next batch of tech demo games will be out next year and the UT4 engine will probably be out next year. The extra £40 or so is nothing over three years.

[Willzzz]

The GTX660TI has 40% more shaders than a GTX660. Moreover as all the Kepler cards are gaming optimised and have the same internal layout,you can make estimations of performance. The same could not be said of the GF100 against the GF104,GF110 against the GF114 or Tahiti against Pitcairn.

It's not just about shaders though is it, or you wouldn't be recommending the 670 above the 660 Ti. Maybe the reduced shader count matches better with the reduced memory bandwidth. And can we directly compare GK106 with GK104, do we really know this?

The most interesting number for the GTX 660 will be the price imo, it seems Nvidia are really pushing for this to be very competitive.

[yako16]

With LN2 could be a great card for make good scores...

[Popeye46]

I just checked Scan prices and that card is the same price as the GTX 670, in some respects it's dearer, wth?.

[strocky]

Mental pricing strategy by Nvdia

[Laserbeak]

Wow expensive makes a gtx670 a no brainerif you have the cash

[G-STAR01]

I've always wondered what the high end cards would look like when the shroud is removed, now I know lol xD

[crossy]

More interestingly, the Anandtech review found that at resolutions above 1080p the AMD cards "beat" (i.e slightly better) out the Nvidia ones (at the middle and lower end). I really not sure if I want a 7950 or a 660 since they are the same price on overclockers.

Yep that's the "problem" that I've got too - I can't see me going higher than 1080p (not allowed a 30" monitor or multi-screen setup - waaah!) in which case either seems as good as the other. My current 460 is slightly overclocked - but that's because (a) I can, and (b) some stuff I've got doesn't work on "stock" settings.

That said, I'm still inclined to stay with NVidia (no driver changes!), justification being that I've got a couple of games that claim "better with PhysX" which means no AMD. So I think I'll be waiting for a good deal on a 670 - surely that can be overclocked (the way the 660TI's are) to even better levels?

One thing I'm not clear on thought is why NVidia cards seem to do poorly on the OpenCL-based benchmarks. I was under the impression that the GeForce's had reasonable-good OpenCL support?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yep that's the "problem" that I've got too - I can't see me going higher than 1080p (not allowed a 30" monitor or multi-screen setup - waaah!) in which case either seems as good as the other. My current 460 is slightly overclocked - but that's because (a) I can, and (b) some stuff I've got doesn't work on "stock" settings.

That said, I'm still inclined to stay with NVidia (no driver changes!), justification being that I've got a couple of games that claim "better with PhysX" which means no AMD. So I think I'll be waiting for a good deal on a 670 - surely that can be overclocked (the way the 660TI's are) to even better levels?

One thing I'm not clear on thought is why NVidia cards seem to do poorly on the OpenCL-based benchmarks. I was under the impression that the GeForce's had reasonable-good OpenCL support?

The HD7950 is an incredibly underclocked card:

http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/radeon_hd_7950/

That is the average overclock of well over 500 cards. The HD7950 has a stock clockspeed of 800MHZ. The same goes with the HD7850 which is very underclocked.

The GTX670 has much more agressive boost than the GTX680,which is why it is so close to a GTX680. Hence,overclocking yields less percentage improvements than the HD7900 series and the GTX680.

Here is an average of over 500 cards on HWBOT:

http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/geforce_gtx_670/

The base minimum clockspeed is 915MHZ,but the cards tend to be running at 1GHZ+ anyway in practice. The GTX670 is a better card at stock clockspeeds(or one of the cheaper HD7970 cards) than an HD7950,but the HD7950 has more overclocking headroom on average and it can hit HD7970 level performance with only a small overclock. According to Hexus the HD7970 is only 5% faster at the same clockspeeds.

This is why on forums like OcUK,there are people who have GTX670 and GTX680 cards(some who admit they are Nvidia fans too),are recommending the HD7950 over the GTX660TI. In the long term,the GTX670 will be a better card and so will the HD7950. The GTX660TI reminds of the 8800GT 256MB and GTX460 768MB - seemingly good at the time when compared to slightly more expensive cards,but in the long term not so good. The same goes with people who got excited about the 1GHZ GTX560TI cards at launch costing around £215 to £230,and recommending them over GTX570 cards which could be had at around £260. The GTX570 is doing somewhat better now.There were loads of people singing their praises then,but they are strangely quiet about it now!

The reduction in ROPs,the reduction in memory bandwidth(especially for the last 512MB in the 2GB cards which makes it essentially pointless) over the GTX670 at the current price point,is not really worth it.

The 3GB GTX660TI cards should technically have slightly less of a bandwidth issue though,but are not cheap AFAIK.

The following is an average of at least 10 review websites at 1920X1080.



That is now,but what happens when newer games come out??

Moreover,if you like adding high quality mods to games like Skyrim the HD7950 does start to move ahead of the GTX660TI:

http://translate.google.com/translat...660-ti%2F24%2F

OTH,if it launched at around £200(or slightly less for reference cards) it would not matter.

Moreover,the GK104 is not compute optimised in both hardware and software as it is the Kepler gaming GPU- Tahiti is a compute monster compared to the GK104. It is the GK110 which will be the Nvidia compute GPU. That will be a monster in all metrics,probably!!

It seems the GK100 was cancelled,and the GK110 has not entered retail yet although professional cards will be out towards the end of the year. With the winding down of the GF110 production,Nvidia has rushed out the Tesla K10. This require TWO GK104 GPUs(it is basically a GTX690), and has lower DP performance than one GF110 based card(less than 50%). Hence it is being touted as a card with decent SP performance which gaming GPUs are fine at.

[crossy]

This is why on forums like OcUK,there are people who have GTX670 and GTX680 cards(some who admit they are Nvidia fans too),are recommending the HD7950 over the GTX660TI. In the long term,the GTX670 will be a better card and so will the HD7950. The GTX660TI reminds of the 8800GT 256MB and GTX460 768MB - seemingly good at the time when compared to slightly more expensive cards,but in the long term not so good. The same goes with people who got excited about the 1GHZ GTX560TI cards at launch costing around £215 to £230,and recommending them over GTX570 cards which could be had at around £260. The GTX570 is doing somewhat better now.There were loads of people singing their praises then,but they are strangely quiet about it now!
[content reluctantly snipped to save space]

Excellent reply - many thanks for taking the time out to do it.

Interesting to see that - as some predicted - the price gap between 660Ti and 670 has opened up - certainly a lot more than the £1 that was the case before. I checked last night and Asus' cards (pretty typical) have a £40-50 "surcharge" for the bigger card.

I take an Intel-like "tick-tock" strategy to buying graphics cards (although I stuck with my old 8800GTX until the 400 series came out), so based on your sage advice it seems pretty certain that the 670 is the one for me - ease of swap, PhysX capability for Batman etc, plus I believe lower power consumption than the Radeon's being the "justifications".

Fascinated to see your comparison of the 660Ti with the "three-quarters" 460. Like the 660 v's 670 decision, I looked at that one before deciding that I preferred the "full" 1GB card - something that I've not regretted.

Again, thanks for taking the time out to lead me by the hand...

[dcwt2010]

I know this sounds silly but I'm still leaning towards a 660ti; physx makes quite a difference in Batman AA & AC, McGee's Alice and Mirror's edge. Maybe I'll just grab a cheap Nvidia card to do physx hybrid.
Anyone here have much experience of that?