Seven GeForce GTX 660 Ti Cards: Exploring Memory Bandwidth

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]The problem with wider memory interface is that it exponentially increases the chip's die-size. Hence, cost per wafer and power consumption will increase a lot.IMO both AMD and Nvidia should use the XDR2 memory in the next series of cards. That would give the same bandwidth at half the interface size.[/citation]

Te Tahiti is only a little more than 20% larger than the GK104 and it has a 50% greater memory interface with obviously great results. The 7950 consumes about as much power as the 670 does. Your argument doesn't work at all.

Guest · Sep 12, 2012

EzioAs :

OMG. you're totally kidding me, right?

i showed where AMD announced another price drop after the release of the 660ti and in response to it. i showed where in the history of the card's pricing a drop coincided with the announcement and you still say the announcement was late?

ok, dude have it your way.

Katsu_rap :

did you even read what i was responding to?

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]looniam[/nom]http://videocardz.com/nvidia/gefor [...] -gtx-660tiRELEASE DATE:August 16h, 2012and as you can see the price drop to ~$300 was announced august 21st and hit the market around that time, after the 660ti was released and the pricing history in the graph obviously shows the announcement wasn't late but happened at the same time.maybe your price checking wasn't as thorough as you thought . . . my point of those great prices on the 7950 because of the 660ti still holds. (thumb that)[/citation]

The price drops were irrelevant of the 660 Ti's performance. Nvidia now had a new card at a $300 price point and even if it performed like crap (which in many situations is exactly how it performs), AMD had to drop prices to reduce the novelty of a new competitor, especially given the hype thar Nvidia threw out with some of the bench-marking sites. Intel also drops prices despite AMD CPUs being much slower for most work at stock, but you don't see many people saying that it's because AMD can compete at stock. At least AMD has a lot of overclocking and such that can be done, the 660 Ti can't even do that properly.

Guest · Sep 12, 2012

blazorthon :

and please refer to these reviews when the 660ti was released that showed it performning better than the then higher priced 7950:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_660_Ti_Amp_Edition/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Ti_Power_Edition/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_660_Ti_Direct_Cu_II/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_GTX_660_Ti_Jet_Stream/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-660-ti-power-editon-oc-review/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-660-ti-windforce-oc-review/
http://www.pureoverclock.com/Review-detail/gigabyte-gtx-660-ti-windforce/
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/43797-kfa2-geforce-gtx-660-ti-ex-oc-3gb/
http://www.motherboards.org/review/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-660-ti-oc-version-review-and-benchmarks
http://www.hitechlegion.com/reviews/graphics/30136-evga-660-ti-sc
http://www.purepc.pl/karty_graficzne/test_geforce_gtx_660_ti_nastepca_gtx_560_ti_staje_do_walki
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-660-Ti-SuperClocked-Video-Card-Review/1616
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx_660ti_roundup_asus_msi_galaxy/
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1552/pg1/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-overclocked-graphics-card-review-introduction.html
http://techreport.com/review/23419/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-graphics-card-reviewed
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56090-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review.html
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3026/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review---3-way-sli-included
http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/zotac_gtx660ti_amp_edition_review,1.html

i can post 18 more . .but i think i made my point: the last price drop of the 7950 was in responce to the release of the 660ti. PERIOD

(and after another cup of coffee it think that is the common ground blazorthon)

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

Look at this Tom's review and look at those again. Then look at the overclocked reviews. Do you think that anything short of water cooling will get a retailing 660 Ti's memory to a huge 1.9GHz? How about gettign the GPU past 1.3GHz like several did (not that it made a significant performance difference)? Heck, how about reaching for 1.2GHz and beyond with mere stock Turbo Boosting clocks? Those were cherry pickerd cards that aren't representative of real-world performance. Even then, when an overclocked 7950 was thrown in with one or two of the reviews, it still beat these cherry picked and overclocked 660 Ti.

I already said that the second price drop was in response to the 660 Ti, so I don't know why you're arguing about that with me. I simply said that it wasn't because of the 7950 being a weaker card, which it obviously isn't.

zooted · Sep 12, 2012

The funny thing is AMD didn't have to drop the prices on the cards anyhow. The had better performing cards due to their non crippled memory bandwidth and they were released months before Nvidia's offering.

Guest · Sep 12, 2012

blazorthon :

i am not talking about today's performance; at that time most sites used drivers that were not matured for the 7950 as much as the 660ti drivers from nVidia. and how everyone screamed about them using CC 12.1 instead of 12.4 so the 660ti was out performing it.

yes i know in hindsight you did not dispute the cause of the price drop, and sorry for taking what you said out of context; its unbelievable the hate from fan boys to point of not believing evidence that is staring them in the face . .

i'm out.

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]looniam[/nom]i am not talking about today's performance; at that time most sites used drivers that were not matured for the 7950 as much as the 660ti drivers from nVidia. and how everyone screamed about them using CC 12.1 instead of 12.4 so the 660ti was out performing it. yes i know in hindsight you did not dispute the cause of the price drop, and sorry for taking what you said out of context; its unbelievable the hate from fan boys to point of not believing evidence that is staring them in the face . .i'm out.[/citation]

I didn't realize that sites testing the 660 Ti compared it to Radeons using old (pre Catalyst 12.7) drivers. I thought that all of the 660 Ti reviews used Catalyst 12.7 in their comparisons. I'll check and look through a bunch of them to make sure of this.

EDIT: Damn, I didn't think that any sites could be so unbiased. You're right. I've looked through the TPU and Guru3D reviews and low and behold, Guru3D used the old Catalyst 21.1 through 21.6 drivers, meaning that they either kept re-installing old drivers or they included outdated results from old tests. Just to think that I was just starting to agree with some people in that Guru3D really isn't biased and my look on them was wrong, I find out that they pulled that crap in their tests.

They also used the very latest Nvidia driver for their 660 Ti reviews rather than doing what they did for AMD, not that it would have been much better. At least they didn't lie about it and maybe they did the tests before the Catalyst 21.7 driver launched, but still... If the latter is true, Guru3D should have put a disclaimer in those articles after finding out about the 12.7 driver. Thanks for mentioning this.

I agree, the hate on both sides from fanboys is ridiculous.

EDIT 2: The PureOerlock review doesn't mention drivers, AMD's performance looks like pre 12.7 drivers to me. hitechlegion used Catalyst 12.6, purepc.pl used anywhere from Catalyst 11.12 to Catalyst 12.4 (some AMD cards had even the December beta drivers from 2010), HardwareSecrets had Catalyst 12.6, overclockersclub didn't mention their driver versions, uk.hardware.info doesn't seem to have posted driver info, and Vortez didn't mention the AMD drivers in use. Jeeze, less than half of the reviews used recent AMD drivers and several of those that did used odd settings (although not all).

jordonc · Sep 12, 2012

I, for one, am glad to have an article that supports picking a decent HD 7870 over the 660ti.

Onus · Sep 12, 2012

I don't want to sound like a darned fanboy, because I'm not, but I recently switched from nVidia to AMD graphics cards, partly because I just can't figure out what nVidia is doing, and I don't think they know either. Even if I want to spend a lot of money (and I don't), EVERY nVidia card is crippled in some way! From the GT640 with its miserable DDR3, through the GTX660Ti with the reduced bandwidth, to even the GTX670 having crippled Compute functionality, what's going on here??? When I buy a graphics card, it should be about what I get, not what I have to give up. In every range: low, middle, and high; AMD offers uncrippled alternatives. Ok, they've had driver issues of their own, but those either have been or are being fixed. What am I missing?

Maxx_Power · Sep 12, 2012

The 78xx's seem great in comparison. Who pays this kind of money and doesn't use all the AA they can get their hands on at 1080p ?

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]I don't want to sound like a darned fanboy, because I'm not, but I recently switched from nVidia to AMD graphics cards, partly because I just can't figure out what nVidia is doing, and I don't think they know either. Even if I want to spend a lot of money (and I don't), EVERY nVidia card is crippled in some way! From the GT640 with its miserable DDR3, through the GTX660Ti with the reduced bandwidth, to even the GTX670 having crippled Compute functionality, what's going on here??? When I buy a graphics card, it should be about what I get, not what I have to give up. In every range: low, middle, and high; AMD offers uncrippled alternatives. Ok, they've had driver issues of their own, but those either have been or are being fixed. What am I missing?[/citation]

Nothing comes to mind on things that AMD intentionally crippled, but I might simply not be thinking of everything.

manicmike · Sep 12, 2012

blazorthon :

I didn't realize that sites testing the 660 Ti compared it to Radeons using old (pre Catalyst 12.7) drivers. I thought that all of the 660 Ti reviews used Catalyst 12.7 in their comparisons. I'll check and look through a bunch of them to make sure of this.

EDIT: Damn, I didn't think that any sites could be so unbiased. You're right. I've looked through the TPU and Guru3D reviews and low and behold, Guru3D used the old Catalyst 21.1 through 21.6 drivers, meaning that they either kept re-installing old drivers or they included outdated results from old tests. Just to think that I was just starting to agree with some people in that Guru3D really isn't biased and my look on them was wrong, I find out that they pulled that crap in their tests.

They also used the very latest Nvidia driver for their 660 Ti reviews rather than doing what they did for AMD, not that it would have been much better. At least they didn't lie about it and maybe they did the tests before the Catalyst 21.7 driver launched, but still... If the latter is true, Guru3D should have put a disclaimer in those articles after finding out about the 12.7 driver. Thanks for mentioning this.

I agree, the hate on both sides from fanboys is ridiculous.

EDIT 2: The PureOerlock review doesn't mention drivers, AMD's performance looks like pre 12.7 drivers to me. hitechlegion used Catalyst 12.6, purepc.pl used anywhere from Catalyst 11.12 to Catalyst 12.4 (some AMD cards had even the December beta drivers from 2010), HardwareSecrets had Catalyst 12.6, overclockersclub didn't mention their driver versions, uk.hardware.info doesn't seem to have posted driver info, and Vortez didn't mention the AMD drivers in use. Jeeze, less than half of the reviews used recent AMD drivers and several of those that did used odd settings (although not all).

Props to blazorthorn for not being one of those "Oh yeah.... well... shut up..." people.

Great article Tom's :sol:

cknobman · Sep 12, 2012

Oh my this article is going to send jaquith into severe fanboy nerd rage, he might just burst a blood vessel.

ahrensy · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]FormatC[/nom]PhysX was off, because it affects the overall performance. PhysX is dead - ok, not quite, but almost[/citation]

Agreed!

I'm happy to be found blind, but were you making an assumption based on their statement of trying to mitigate processing load?

I still can't see it specified is all; and Batman AC defaults to High PhysX unless you scroll down to notice the setting (well for me anyway, not really sure if it goes by card config), and on High, many places have hundreds of additional little objects on the ground like leaves and shattered bits of wall and glass. I would still expect the memory bandwidth scaling problems shown here (was pretty much as I expected for the 192-bit bus). If PhysX was actually on High (however unlikely as you say, given their testing intent), then what might be the real impact when it gets to 4x or 8x MSAA with all those extra little objects in play... would be nice to know for sure what Tom's tested, that's all.

Onus · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Nothing comes to mind on things that AMD intentionally crippled, but I might simply not be thinking of everything.[/citation]
It's not "what did AMD cripple," it's "is there a nVidia card that is NOT somehow crippled?" Of course lower-end cards have fewer shaders, or less ROPS, or something else is reduced compared to a more expensive card, but nVidia seems to be doing other kinds of mutilating, just to leave something out, and I can't figure out why...

zero messiah · Sep 12, 2012

For me i think the real winner was the x2 7750. at least in the 1920x1080 range. just looked on newegg and a a pair of HIS can be bought for around $210, and there is a 10 buck rebate on each.

I would like to see an article with midrange cards vs low end cards in crossfire, just curious.

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]zero messiah[/nom]For me i think the real winner was the x2 7750. at least in the 1920x1080 range. just looked on newegg and a a pair of HIS can be bought for around $210, and there is a 10 buck rebate on each.I would like to see an article with midrange cards vs low end cards in crossfire, just curious.[/citation]

The problem with that is that they wouldn't beat a 7850 that can be bought for about the same price.

blazorthon · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]It's not "what did AMD cripple," it's "is there a nVidia card that is NOT somehow crippled?" Of course lower-end cards have fewer shaders, or less ROPS, or something else is reduced compared to a more expensive card, but nVidia seems to be doing other kinds of mutilating, just to leave something out, and I can't figure out why...[/citation]

My theory is profit. Even making a GPU that is only somewhat smaller than another can make it significantly cheaper to mass-produce because it means more chips per wafer and gives a higher yield due to the chance of any one chip having a problem being lower. They also use fewer memory ICs than AMD's 7900 cards and smaller PCBs (implying inferior VRM and such as well), all of which decreases costs. Remember, Nvidia didn't use the exact same 28nm TSMC process as AMD for their GPUs and that may have been the cause of their apparent yield problems. That the vast majority of GK104s shipping are undoubtedly in the 660 Ti and the 670 tells me that at the least, with one SMX and also with a memory controller disabled, the GK104s can pass binning far more readily.

Geforce 6xx seems to be a generation that is optimized for cost rather than performance. Having so many GPU cores that are as powerful as they are means that if Nvidia does tests that don't involve much in the way of settings that are heavily impacted by features that Nvidia crippled, they can use hype/marketing to try to make people not realize the issues. That lets them use higher prices than they should while making it look like they are better than even more expensive or at least similarly priced AMD cards that are actually far more balanced and superior when put to more strenuous tests that make more sense.

For example, the 660 Ti is priced at about $290-$340, mostly at or above $300, but when overclocking is considered, even the far cheaper Radeon 7850 can surpass it and the 7870 that is similar to the 7850 in price can do so even at stock or to a greater extent with overclocking. Then we have the 7950 that is generally around the 660 Ti in price, but even without overclocking, can really be a show-stopper for the 660 Ti at stock and to an extreme when overclocked.

mikenygmail · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]It's not "what did AMD cripple," it's "is there a nVidia card that is NOT somehow crippled?" Of course lower-end cards have fewer shaders, or less ROPS, or something else is reduced compared to a more expensive card, but nVidia seems to be doing other kinds of mutilating, just to leave something out, and I can't figure out why...[/citation]

Probably for the same reasons nvidia left out video RAM, meaning not enough of it, for so many years except on the highest end cards.

Nvidia likes to mess around with 896 MB, 768 MB and other ridiculously low amounts of video RAM, then in subsequent years they offered 1.5 GB when AMD's cards had 2 GB, and now only 2 GB when AMD offers 3 GB.

They do it to save money, and to try to force the consumer to buy their most expensive card, and even then the AMD equivalent often has more video RAM. AMD is not perfect either, but at least they have always been generous with video RAM.

zooted · Sep 12, 2012

[citation][nom]mikenygmail[/nom]Probably for the same reasons nvidia left out video RAM, meaning not enough of it, for so many years except on the highest end cards. Nvidia likes to mess around with 896 MB, 768 MB and other ridiculously low amounts of video RAM, then in subsequent years they offered 1.5 GB when AMD's cards had 2 GB, and now only 2 GB when AMD offers 3 GB. They do it to save money, and to try to force the consumer to buy their most expensive card, and even then the AMD equivalent often has more video RAM. AMD is not perfect either, but at least they have always been generous with video RAM.[/citation]I love competition, which is why I fear Nvidia is pulling a 3dfx. Nvidia has no competition from entry to mid level gpu's.

ikaruga · Sep 12, 2012

Thanks for this nice review. Well done.

Onus · Sep 13, 2012

[citation][nom]zooted[/nom]I love competition, which is why I fear Nvidia is pulling a 3dfx. Nvidia has no competition from entry to mid level gpu's.[/citation]
Blatantly false. NVidia has nothing that can touch the HD6670 or HD7750; not at their prices, and not at their low power usage.

blazorthon · Sep 13, 2012

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]Blatantly false. NVidia has nothing that can touch the HD6670 or HD7750; not at their prices, and not at their low power usage.[/citation]

I think that zooted's point was that Nvidia isn't competing at the entry to mid level, not that no one can compete with Nvidia at the entry to mid level.

jaquith · Sep 13, 2012

Interesting - TXAA anyone, not even a mention of it in the Article. How about CSAA, FXAA, QSAA, MLAA or SSAA, etc; i.e. other forms of Anti-Aliasing. Seems like a very narrow scope of testing -- unless something else is going on here?? I'd like to see the average frame rates with vSync and employing Adaptive vSync, I'm certain it would portray a completely different set of opinions. Raw frame rates are full of tearing and AA looks are the least of your problems.

TXAA is where I hope things are going and I know Crysis 3 is employing TXAA along with several other new titles very soon.

TXAA vs MSAA:

AMD (or any GPU with standard vSync):

nVidia (adaptive vSync):

Seven GeForce GTX 660 Ti Cards: Exploring Memory Bandwidth

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