Reviews - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC

[HEXUS]

NVIDIA's sub-£200 powerhouse gets a WindForce makeover.

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[scaryjim]

I have to admit, the more I see of GTX660, the more I'm leaning towards it for the builds I'm doing for a couple of mates this winter. Just need to check whether they play DIRT or not...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,with the new price cuts on HD7870 putting it under 200 quid,has put the sheen off the GTX660 launch.

[Willzzz]

Well it's fine at DiRT 3, it's just the Showdown version where it falls flat.

I'm surprised Hexus even used Showdown as part of it's review, the results were a foregone conclusion.

[Willzzz]

TBH,with the new price cuts on HD7870 putting it under 200 quid,has put the sheen off the GTX660 launch.

Well I have to say this one looks quite tempting once it comes in stock:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...hdmi-2x-mini-d

But it is a cheaper cooler rather than a Twin Frozr model and they can't get the bundled games in at that price point.
It's certainly competitive, but it's not measurably better across a broad selection of titles.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,neither the HD7870 or GTX660 offer enough of a performance boost for me ATM.I generally want a doubling of performance when I upgrade,and it would mean near GTX670 or HD7970 level going by TPU. Looks like the HD8870 or GTX760 will hit that level,so looks like I will wait another 6 months. Going to see how much hardware Crysis 3 and Metro:Last Light will need!

[scaryjim]

I'm surprised Hexus even used Showdown as part of it's review, the results were a foregone conclusion.

The first review that they used it in they specifically mentioned that NVidia ask review sites *not* to use it. Given some of the (now ancient) history between Hexus and NVidia I'm not at all surprised they decided to stick it in the line up (besides, historically Hexus reviews have used one version of DIRT or another). Bottom line is if a game's popular then review sites *should* use it, even if it does run a lot better on one set of hardware. For a long time Hexus used Starcraft II, which was a massive NVidia benefit. And I don't think there's much need to dwell on Crysis 2's DX11 pack Consumers need to know if a particular card isn't very good at a particular game, and if all reviewers bowed to NVidia's request then you could end up buying a GTX660 to play DIRT Showdown and being *very* disappointed...

[Willzzz]

I don't know of any other game where the difference is that huge. Games like SC2 and BF3 don't come close to being as biased as Showdown.

It's even more suspicious when you look at the difference between DiRT Showdown and DiRT 3, how can the difference possibly be that big?

[Terbinator]

With a bit of luck Hexus can revert back to the F1 series for their Ego fix now this years title has been released.

[scaryjim]

It's even more suspicious when you look at the difference between DiRT Showdown and DiRT 3, how can the difference possibly be that big?

New compute-intensive lighting effects - that AMD assisted in the design of. What's consumer Kepler's biggest downfall? Massively hobbled compute performance. Just like the Crysis 2 DX11 pack got massively excessive tessellation when NVidia helped with that. However, Hexus don't do an overall performance assessment anymore (gone are the normalised performance and bang-4-buck/bang-4-watt, perhaps for that very reason?), so it's not going to adversely affect any conclusions - it's just a useful way of pointing you that some games are particularly hardware sensitive. You might as well ask why they use Luxmark, since the results there are similarly skewed...

It's also worth remembering that whilst no other game is so heavily skewed on current hardware, in past generations some games were horribly dependent on one vendor or the other. It's always been the case for a small number of titles...

EDIT: just remembered the other one: CoD:MW2. Massive Nvidia benefit, putting a GTX460 roughly on par with the 5870....

[Willzzz]

Well yes, the game was specifically designed to create the biggest possible gap between Nvidia and AMD.

Can you turn these lighting effects off?

Most games run better on AMD or Nvidia depending on settings. If you turn on 8xMSAA it might cause Nvidia to struggle, if you turn Tessellation up to High AMD might struggle. But you can apply settings in between where both technologies give good performance.

[Terbinator]

New compute-intensive lighting effects - that AMD assisted in the design of. What's consumer Kepler's biggest downfall? Massively hobbled compute performance. Just like the Crysis 2 DX11 pack got massively excessive tessellation when NVidia helped with that. However, Hexus don't do an overall performance assessment anymore (gone are the normalised performance and bang-4-buck/bang-4-watt, perhaps for that very reason?), so it's not going to adversely affect any conclusions - it's just a useful way of pointing you that some games are particularly hardware sensitive. You might as well ask why they use Luxmark, since the results there are similarly skewed...

It's also worth remembering that whilst no other game is so heavily skewed on current hardware, in past generations some games were horribly dependent on one vendor or the other. It's always been the case for a small number of titles...

EDIT: just remembered the other one: CoD:MW2. Massive Nvidia benefit, putting a GTX460 roughly on par with the 5870....

My issue with the Dirt Showdown results is that even the 6xxx end up out-gunning their 5xx equivalents which they wouldn't otherwise do. The AMD blog specifically says the game is adapted/designed for GCN, hence the 7870 pasting the GTX 680 - the 6xxx series are not GCN but the trend still follows, not to mention we know that Fermi's compute performance is certainly top draw.

@Willzzz: Why would you want to turn the lighting effects off? If its performance you're after there are significantly better games out there that aren't as gimped.

[Willzzz]

@Willzzz: Why would you want to turn the lighting effects off? If its performance you're after there are significantly better games out there that aren't as gimped.

Well I know, but scaryjim is suggesting that there might be people out there who actually buy the game.

[PowerPie5000]

Well I know, but scaryjim is suggesting that there might be people out there who actually buy the game.

I got the game free with my Radeon 7950, but i'd have no problem buying it as it's a great game . I'm also thinking Sleeping Dogs is more AMD optimised as it runs better on my PC (i5 3570K with HIS Radeon 7950) than it does on a friends PC (i7 2600K with EVGA GTX 670).... All maxed out of course (at 1080p).

[Willzzz]

Yes I would be surprised if a bundled game wasn't optimised for that GPU, but Showdown isn't just optimised for AMD, it also deliberately runs poorly on Nvidia.

Sleeping Dogs is certainly better on AMD, but you can still run it acceptably on Nvidia hardware.

[TheEdGallagher]

Call me slightly cynical, but why is it when Nvidia cards are reviewed they are generally the "Pre-Overclocked" versions versus the stock clocked AMDs???