The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTOC: Power, Temperature, & Noise
Our final task is our look at the overclocking capabilities of our GTX 660 Ti cards. Based on what we’ve seen thus far with GTX 660 Ti, these factory overclocked parts are undoubtedly eating into overclocking headroom, so we’ll have to see just what we can get out of them. The very similar GTX 670 topped out at around 1260MHz for the max boost clock, and between 6.6GHz and 6.9GHz for the memory clock.
| GeForce 660 Ti Overclocking | |||||
| EVGA GTX 660 Ti SC | Zotac GTX 660 Ti AMP | Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti OC | |||
| Shipping Core Clock | 980MHz | 1033MHz | 1033MHz | ||
| Shipping Max Boost Clock | 1150MHz | 1175MHz | 1228MHz | ||
| Shipping Memory Clock | 6GHz | 6.6GHz | 6GHz | ||
| Shipping Max Boost Voltage | 1.175v | 1.175v | 1.175v | ||
| Overclock Core Clock | 1030MHz | 1033MHz | 1083MHz | ||
| Overclock Max Boost Clock | 1200MHz | 1175MHz | 1278MHz | ||
| Overclock Memory Clock | 6.5GHz | 6.8GHz | 6.6GHz | ||
| Overclock Max Boost Voltage | 1.175v | 1.175v | 1.175v | ||
As we suspected, starting with factory overclocked cards isn’t helping here. Our Zotac card wouldn’t accept any kind of meaningful GPU core overclock, so it shipped practically as fast as it could go. We were able to squeeze out another 200MHz on the memory clock though.
Meanwhile our EVGA and Gigabyte cards fared slightly better. We could push another 50MHz out of their GPU clocks, bringing us to a max boost clock of 1200MHz on the EVGA card and 1278MHz on the Gigabyte card. Memory overclocking was similarly consistent; we were able to hit 6.5GHz on the EVGA card and 6.6GHz on the Gigabyte card.
Altogether these are sub-5% GPU overclocks, and at best 10% memory overclocks, which all things considered are fairly low overclocks. The good news is that reference-clocked cards should fare better since their headroom has not already been consumed by factory overclocking, but binning also means the best cards are going to be going out as factory overclocked models.
Moving on to our performance charts, we’re going to once again start with power, temperature, and noise, before moving on to gaming performance.
Unsurprisingly, given the small power target difference between the GTX 670 and the GTX 660 Ti, any kind of overclocking that involves raising the power target quickly pushes power consumption past the GTX 670’s power consumption. How much depends on the test and the card, with the higher power target Gigabyte card starting with a particular disadvantage here as its power consumption ends up rivaling that of the GTX 680.
We also see the usual increase in load temperatures due to the increased power consumption. The Zotac and Gigabyte cards fare well enough due to their open air coolers, but the blower-type EVGA card is about as high as we want to go at 80C under OCCT.
Last but not least, looking at noise levels we can see an increase similar to the temperature increases we just saw. For the Zotac and EVGA cards noise levels are roughly equal with the reference GTX 680, which will be important to remember for when we’re looking at performance. Meanwhile the Gigabyte card continues to shine in these tests thanks to its oversized cooler; even OCCT can only push it to 46.8dB.
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CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Boy but once we get to talking about the amd laptop APU's - Gee then the gaming sky is the limit and golly it's so, so important to take advantage of the great amd gaming hardware !RussianSensation - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
8800GT can't even play Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Shogun 2, Anno 2070, Witcher 2, Batman AC smoothly without resorting to DX9 or having everything set to Medium. It's a good card but new cards are 5x faster.evolucion8 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Odd, my laptop has a GTX 560m which is pretty much a power optimized GTS 450 and Im able to play Crysis DX10on high at 720p without AA, it runs between 23-33fps which might not seems great, is enough for casual gaming. I wonder how a 8800GT couldn't run that game at least on medium at the same resolution. Regarding other games like Crysis 2 and Batman AC they only run on DX9 or DX11, Metro 2033 is another story lolGalidou - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
You just said it yourself, 720p, no AA, 23-33 fps in a forum speaking about gtx 660 ti surrounded by people playing mostly 1080p and above... For me, anything below 40 fps is not super playable and still it's ALOT better when my fps is pegged at 60 with vsync.BTW GTS 450 = 9800gtx+ > 8800gt
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Then those terrible fps drops to very low 10 or 0 on amd cards should be bothering you. Do they bother you ?ionis - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Batman AC, Anno 2070, Hard Reset, and Skyrim are what I've been playing just fine, along with many other modern games. I don't think these games even have a DX 10 option, so of course they'll use DX 9.TheJian - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
He said 1680x1050.Metro 2033 at 37fps:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-gra...
I wouldn't run a game in DX10 anyway regarding Crysis and warhead (both of which run dx10 or 9...with all from XP running 9, it's not even about the cards, it's about the os). Google Alex St. John and DirectX 10 for his opinion. Which is rather important since he created DirectX. He and Extremetech/Pcmag proved it sucks in I think it was 9 or 11 games, noting screenshots for those who wanted to compare versions of games run under 9 vs 10. Nothing but a performance hit they said.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/lost_planet_de...
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/77486-bioshoc...
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/78788-bioshoc...
http://www.shacknews.com/article/46338/alex-st-joh...
Regarding the rest...I'm pretty sure he could run most at his res without resorting to running everything on medium. The 8800GT was a pretty awesome card. My dad still owns his...LOL. With a stroke though, he doesn't play as much so will get my hand-me-down radeon 5850 when I upgrade at black friday this year, The 8800GT almost obsoleted the overpriced 8800GTX and 8800Ultra overnight at the time it came out.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-8800-g...
first of many benchmarks in that review.
I won't argue that newer cards are 5 times faster...But in 1680x1050 I might argue how many times he'll notice. :) My nephew only complained about skyrim at this res on a less potent card. I'd also note ionis would have to spend quite a bit to get 5x that card he already has. My own card was only bought because it was 2x faster than my old card (a duplicate of my dads, which is a faster clocked 8800GT 512MB, Huge MSI copper pipes made it near silent also, the PSU fan was louder). He'd have to spend a few hundred at least. I'm currently waiting for another double of my 5850 at $300 (which I think just got released here :)). But I can wait a few more months for a great deal. So I'm guessing about $300 to beat his old 8800GT by 5x. His gpu may be limited by the cpu at that res quite a bit no matter what he buys at $300. Most running an old 8800gt I'd guess are running older cpu's too. So to see that 5x may require a new cpu in a lot of games (which I'm assuming is his monitor's NATIVE res). But it certainly would allow him to set EVERYTHING gpu wise at max on 1680x1050, of that I wholeheartedly agree. If he witnesses a slowdown at that point it's most likely his CPU :) Nvidia/AMD have really kind of run out of excuses for us to buy new cards right now. Unless you have a 27in (in rare cases 24's at 2560) or above, or multi monitor it's hard to argue for dual cards, or a great card at 2560x1600+. Newegg's 24's are all 1920x1200 (20 models) or 1920x1080 (48 models) for native resolutions out of 68 total :) Those are the RECOMMENDED resolutions for these 68 24in models at newegg Ryan.
Again, I wonder why Ryan couldn't make a recommendation with just a quick look at resolutions on Newegg's 68 24in monitors showing NONE in native at 2560x1600. Besides the fact that you have to jack all sorts of things around at that res on a 24 in the OS or they're small. 2560x1600 is ideally for 27in+. Raise your hand if you have a 27 or 30in...LOL. The recommendation is EASY at 1920x1200 (the highest native res of ANY 24 on newegg RYAN!). Even the $289 dell UltraSharp U2412M is only 1920x1200. This is a quite expensive 24in (albeit gorgeous). $400 24's on there are still 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. Still can't figure out what to recommend ryan? I don't get it. I'm all for giving AMD help if I can, but get real. The 660TI appears to dominate almost all games at these resolutions.
mlb12uk - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Hi RyanThanks for the review. Im looking a GPU for 1920x1080 to play skyrim and upcomming mods. Im looking at the GTX 660 and a HD 7870, both cards have 2GB memory which I think should be enough. My questions is which would you recommend? The GTX 660 looks good but the slower memory bandwidth seems to hinder it in certain games that seem to make use of high memory availability (im guessing games like skyrim?).
What are your thoughts on this please?
RussianSensation - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I think you should be comparing a 660Ti to HD7950. The 7870 can be had for $250 on Newegg. If you plan on overclocking, 7950 is the better card for Skyim, especially with mods and high AA. While not tested here, once you add Mods and crank AA, 7900 series is much faster than GTX600 in SKYRIM:7950 800mhz leads GTX660Ti by 24% at 1080P with 8AA with mods in Skyrim:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/20...
You can pick up HD7950 MSI Twin Frozr for $317 with 3 free games. It's already preoverclocked to 880mhz and is actually one of the best overclocking 7950s on the market.
rarson - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
I didn't actually notice your username when I was reading your reply, and was shocked to read that you were actually recommending the 7950... that's when I realized you weren't Ryan.