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

[cleeve]

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?

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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

*edit, costs 100$ less then GTX 580.

 

[rmpumper]

That's strange - on techpowerup review the 660Ti is above 7950's average performance.

 

[outlw6669]

[citation][nom]game junky[/nom]I was sold on a ASUS 670 but I think I'll wait to compare specs with their 660ti.[/citation]
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.

 

[verbalizer]

nice card, not OVERLY impressed...
BUT THE PRICE...!
c'mon SON let's be real here......
ridiculous @ $300 beans..

 

[hellfire24]

waiting for a price cut down.who's with me?

 

[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....

 

[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..

 

[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

 

[mayankleoboy1]

GTX580 has lower average FPS but usually has a higher Minimum FPS than GTX660.
i would take higher min fps over a higher average FPS anyday.

on the final page, a graph comparing the min FPS of the games should have been there too.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

i think the reviewer went overboard with the OpenCL tests in this review. You could have pared down some of those image/video manipulation tests.

 

[BattleshipLorenzen]

If you overclock (why wouldn't you?), then the 7870 is the obvious choice. 660ti doesn't leave much headroom, while Pitcarim cards scale beautifully with OC (and have plenty of headroom). I wonder about the inconsistent OC improvements - was the 660ti thermally throttled on the games where the OC didn't help (much), or was it just the memory bandwidth (i.e., those games/settings had more taxing memory loads)?

 

[ilysaml]

So am i the only one seeing that GTX 660Ti is a fail?

 

[guru_urug]

Indeed, the 660ti hasnt lived upto its hype. I'd pick a HD7870 over it, especially since the 7870 will fall down to the 250-280 range after AMD begins with the price cut.

 

[ilysaml]

[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]Compared to the "wow" of the GTX 670 launch, this is very "meh".... needs to get down closer to the $250 mark to have that "wow" factor.[/citation]
I've seen some HD 7870s getting close to this price, I guess it's a win-round for AMD.

 

[tomfreak]

lol Looks like the pitcrain 7870 is holding up pretty well. Can I say 660ti is between 7850 vs 7870 and on rare case above 7870?

I guess a 1.1GHz 7870 will just on par with 660ti. Pitcrain is just a powerful thing.

 

[supall]

[citation][nom]guru_urug[/nom]Indeed, the 660ti hasnt lived upto its hype. I'd pick a HD7870 over it, especially since the 7870 will fall down to the 250-280 range after AMD begins with the price cut.[/citation]

Last month, you could have picked up a non-reference 7870 for well below the $300 price tag (some after mail-in rebate). With the 660TI being a "meh" product, I doubt you'll find any significant price drops until Black Friday.

 

[jaquith]

Considering 'other' sites jumped the gun, none of this is new or news to me. I would concur the OpenCL is IMO pointless; I consider both the GTX 600 & HD 7000 series 'gaming' GPUs.

The nice things about the GTX 660 Ti are the added vRAM 2GB, 3-WAY SLI is supported, and the same architectural Kepler. My advice is if purchasing then get a non-reference GTX 660 Ti which allows over-volting and OC if and when needed by doing so you'll match the GTX 670's performance.

3D Vision folks, my recommendation are the 4GB vRAM GTX 670 or 680's in SLI and as needed (2~4 WAY) depending on your resolution.

Very thorough benchmark and review - http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3026/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review---3-way-sli-included

 

[-Fran-]

I have the GTX670 and it falls short on newer games that use DirectCompute for some effects. It's ridiculous the performance hit it gets. In Dirt Showdown, with Global Lightning activated, the FPS drops a lot, even without MSAA activated at all!

From what I'm thinking, the GTX6xx series will fall short when more games start using more GPGPU oriented programming for some visual effects, whereas the 7xxx series from AMD might not fall short.

Cheers!

Cheers!

 

[KrisPC]

Just got a glimpse of EVGA 660 Ti selection - and I must say there are so many of them. The best EVGA 660 Ti - FTW 3GB w/Backplate is almost on par with 670 FTW, plus it's got 1GB of extra memory (and I assume it's memory bandwidth is the same with other 3GB 660 Ti's) and it's MSRP is 350$. Same goes for 660 Ti FTW, almost the same specs and 100$ less compared to 670 FTW.

Those news doesn't make me very happy though, because I bought my 670's last month when there were no solid rumors when the 660 is released and my deadline was the end of august. However considering I was rocking with 8600M GT before that, the fun factor is well worth it.

 

[Wisecracker]

Toms: Most objective article seen thus far on the 660ti

Good job!

 

[wiinippongamer]

The once again pathetic GPGPU would be enough to sway me towards the 7870 if I needed an upgrade.

 

[ojas]

Hmmm. Probably expected, with the cut-down memory bandwidth.

Anyway, check out AnandTech's review too. Haven't read it yet, but they usually have good reviews as well.

Though i liked this review a lot, pretty balanced. Good job Don!