The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition
Our next GTX 660 Ti of the day is Zotac’s entry, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition. As indicated by the AMP branding (and like the other cards in this review) it’s a factory overclocked card; in fact it has the highest factory overclock of all the cards we’re reviewing today, with both a core and memory overclock.
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti Partner Card Specification Comparison | ||||||
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti(Ref) | EVGA GTX 660 Ti Superclocked | Zotac GTX 660 Ti AMP! | Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti OC | |||
| Base Clock | 915MHz | 980MHz | 1033MHz | 1033MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 980MHz | 1059MHz | 1111MHz | 1111MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 6008MHz | 6008MHz | 6608MHz | 6008MHz | ||
| Frame Buffer | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | ||
| TDP | 150W | 150W | 150W | ~170W | ||
| Width | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | ||
| Length | N/A | 9.5" | 7.5" | 10,5" | ||
| Warranty | N/A | 3 Year | 3 Year + Life | 3 Year | ||
| Price Point | $299 | $309 | $329 | $319 | ||
Zotac will be shipping the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP at 1033MHz for the base clock and 1111MHz for the boost clock. This represents a sizable 118MHz (13%) base overclock, and a 131MHz (13%) boost overclock. Meanwhile Zotac will be shipping their memory at 6.6GHz, a full 600MHz (10%) over the reference GTX 660 Ti. The latter overclock will stand to be very important, as we’ve already noted the GTX 660 Ti is starting off life as a memory bandwidth crippled card. Power consumption willing, the GTX 660 Ti AMP is in a good position to pick up at least 10% on performance relative to the reference GTX 660 Ti.
Like the EVGA card we just took a look at, Zotac’s GTX 660 Ti is based on NVIDIA’s reference board, so we’ll skip the details here. Rather than using a blower like EVGA however, Zotac is using an open air cooler – dubbed the dual silencer – that is well suited for a board of this length. The cooler uses a pair of 70mm fans, mounted over an aluminum heatsink that runs nearly the entire length of the card. Attaching the heatsink to the GPU itself is a trio of copper heatpipes, which transfer heat from the GPU to various points on the heatsink. Meanwhile the VRMs are cooled by a smaller, separate heatsink that fits under the primary heatsink; given the size and the location, it’s hard to say just how well this secondary heatsink is being cooled.
Altogether the card measures just 7.5” in length, an otherwise itty-bity card made just a bit longer thanks to some overhang from Zotac’s cooler. Zotac advertises their dual silencer as being 10C cooler and 10dB quieter than the competition, and while this may strictly be true when compared to some blowers, it’s not appreciably different than the dual-fan open air heatsinks that are extremely common on the market today. In fact among all of the cards we’re reviewing today this is unquestionably the most standard of them, as Zotac and several other NVIDIA partners will be shipping reference clocked cards built very similar to this. For this reason we’ll be using Zotac’s card as our reference card for the purpose of our testing.
Moving on, power and display connectivity is the same as with the GTX 670 and other cards using NVIDIA’s PCBs. This means 2 PCIe power sockets and 2 SLI connectors on the top, and 1 DL-DVI-D port, 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 full size HDMI 1.4 port, and 1 full size DisplayPort 1.2 on the front.
Rounding out the package is the usual collection of molex power adapters and quickstart guides, along with a trial version of Trackmania Canyon. However the real star of the show as far as pack-in games goes will be Borderlands 2 through NVIDIA’s launch offer.
Wrapping things up, Zotac is attaching a $329 MSRP to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP, which makes it a full $30 more expensive than reference-clocked cards and reflecting the greater factory overclock. This also makes it the most expensive card in today’s review by $10. Meanwhile for the warranty Zotac is offering a base 2 year warranty, which is extended to a rather generous full limited lifetime warranty upon registration of the card.
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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
nVidia= "drivers fixed immediately"amd= " drivers not fixed for years, and broken fixing something else"
JM Popaleetus - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Ryan,Can we expect some benchmarks and data in regards to the 660 and further overclocking?
Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Going up now.bill4 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
When I just checked newegg and there are no 660 TI in stock?Or for that matter, that 680 was impossible to find for *months*? Why is that OK? I saw NO reviewers ever nick Nvidia for that one...
Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Hi bill;That's a reasonable question.
First and foremost, it's 7am in the morning. Newegg doesn't always post stock updates this early, so GTX 660 Ti cards may not show up until a bit later in the day. Though EVGA already has their cards up on their site.
As for our concerns about launch availability, it's the difference between what is being claimed and what is being delivered. NVIDIA told us right from the start that the supply of the GTX 680 would be tight, and that's exactly what happened. AMD told us that the 7970GE would be available in late June, and that did not happen.
Mind you, AMD isn't having supply issues either. The 7970GE wasn't late because AMD was having any kind of trouble supplying partners with suitable GPUs.
antef - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I got badly bitten this generation by the classic "new products are just around the corner" conundrum. I wanted to upgrade exactly this time last year but didn't because I wanted the new and more efficient 28nm AMD cards that were supposedly just around the corner. Instead, they came late and were a huge letdown: too expensive and not the kind of performance boost I was expecting. Then NVIDIA countered but only focused on the high-end for all these months. However it did seem that NVIDIA had the better, more efficient product. So I was waiting for their card in the $200-300 range and finally after a whole year it's here.The price is a bit high, but I'm tired of waiting and will probably jump on this. I like the cool and silent operation of the Gigabyte but Ryan speaks highly of the ZOTAC as well, not sure which to get.
Should I jump on this as soon as I see retail availability?
just4U - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I have to disagree.. they were not a letdown at all.. Price seemed to be the only major complaint people were having. But in a way AMD has been on the ball. Their a step ahead of Nvidia in getting next gen products out and a half step behind in performance. To me that seems pretty good.rarson - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
Yeah, and price was only an issue because people were ignoring economic and manufacturing factors and making unreasonable expectations.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Yeah sure there rarson, it wasn't AMD in a fit of corporate piggery and immense greed scalping the crap out of us and abandoning the gaming community for as long as they could possibly keep selling their junk at a huge inflated price.....Oh wait.... it was.
Galidou - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
And would you stop exaggerating with your conspirations and overpriced SHIT language all over the place. What hurts the most in the past if we speak about pricing stupidity is probably buying an i7-980x cpu for 1100$ and then one week later sandy bridge gets out and tramples the cpu at 220-300$ price points with an i5-2500k and i7-2600k... speak about inflated prices for pieces of hardware that must cost not even 30$ to manufacture.Nvidia as any other company isn't being nicer, it's still based on maximum profit. They probably sell video cards that costs 20$ to manufacture and beleive me the profit doesn't go into funding environmental projects to get rid of all the electric wastes we create every year.
They pay developpers like any other company to get games optimized for their hardware and what's happening now, reduces our choices depending on the games we play. They still ask reviewers to ensure their products have the best performance in their reviews. That's, to me, liying to the consumer(US) so they sell more stuff. Even if their product is good(which they are), that's still manipulating the opinion, thus they do not work for the people, they work for the profit.
So... please, stop speaking about Nvidia like if everything they do has been decided by god before and thus is perfect in every way... it doesn't work. You won't be a better human nor be more happy if you play more game thanks to the performance of your video card, you'll just end up being more addicted and that's it.