The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost.
The reduction in memory bandwidth and ROP throughput coming from the GTX 670 comes with roughly an 11% performance cost here, just about splitting the difference between the best and worst case scenarios. This is important for the GTX 660 Ti since it means the card doesn’t surrender NVIDIA’s performance advantage in BF3. At 1920 with FXAA that means the GTX 660 Ti has a huge 30% performance lead over the 7950, and even the 7970 falls behind the GTX 660 Ti. The only real disappointment here is that 1920 with MSAA isn’t quite playable – 53fps means that framerates will bottom out in the mid-20s, which isn’t desirable.
Meanwhile the factory overclocked cards continue to up the ante, and ends up being another game that factory overclocks offer a decent improvement. Zotac tops the factory cards at 10%, followed by Gigabyte and EVGA. We’re once again seeing the impact of Zotac’s memory overclock, and how in memory bandwidth limited situations it’s more important than Gigabyte’s higher power target, though Gigabyte does come close.
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badnvidia - Thursday, December 13, 2012 - link
I have purchased 2 of the new Nvidia 600 series, a gtx 660 ti, which runs fine this far, but I would question if it was worth it's cost. I purchased a second cheaper gtx 650 because cost with the promised free download of Assassins Creed III made it best choice for second computer video card. The game download promotion is a lie, tigerdirect codes are not being honored by Nvidia and I informed tigerdirect but they are still selling these cards with the promise of free game download. This is a dishonest promotion by both firms, Beware!Why support firms that are promoting these video cards with a dishonest promotion. If the free download promotion has exceeded its allotment, then both firms should stop advertising it and promising a free game download they know is not going to be honored. Shame on them for promoting such lies to customers at Christmas. I will never buy from them again.
Ajish - Sunday, March 17, 2013 - link
pls help... i have i3 2100,2 HDDs , 6 GB RAM, Corsair CX 500W psu....h61 mobo...... which one is best 660ti or 7850....both 2gb memory....m asking...... pls help.....shuko666 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
mi tarjeta de video es una gtx 660 ti 1g DDR5 SE ME PONEE AL 100 % EL CONSUMO ES BUENO O MALOO? Y SE ME CALIENTA LA PC A 65 GRADOS DICEN QUE ES NORMAL PERO SE ME ME BAJAN LOS FPS EN VARIOS JUEGOS Y PUES SE SIENTE LENTA LA PC. ALGUNOS ME DICEN QUE LE PONGA UN SEIDON PARA EL CALENTAMIENTO. Y TENGO UUN PROCESADOR FX 8 3.10 3120 8GB DE RAM 1337 HZ FUENTE DE PODER 550 COOLMASTER 500 DE DISCO DURO. ALGUNA SOLUCION SERA AGRADECIDA