The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC
Our final GTX 660 Ti of the day is Gigabyte’s entry, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC. Unlike the other cards in our review today this is not a semi-custom card but rather a fully-custom card, which brings with it some interesting performance ramifications.
| 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 | ||
The big difference between a semi-custom and fully-custom card is of course the PCB; fully-custom cards pair a custom cooler with a custom PCB instead of a reference PCB. Partners can go in a few different directions with custom PCBs, using them to reduce the BoM, reduce the size of the card, or even to increase the capabilities of a product. For their GTX 660 Ti OC, Gigabyte has gone in the latter direction, using a custom PCB to improve the card.
On the surface the specs of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC are relatively close to our other cards, primarily the Zotac. Like Zotac Gigabyte is pushing the base clock to 1033MHz and the boost clock to 1111MHz, representing a sizable 118MHz (13%) base overclock and a 131MHz (13%) boost overclock respectively. Unlike the Zotac however there is no memory overclocking taking place, with Gigabyte shipping the card at the standard 6GHz.
What sets Gigabyte apart here in the specs is that they’ve equipped their custom PCB with better VRM circuitry, which means NVIDIA is allowing them to increase their power target from the GTX 660 Ti standard of 134W to an estimated 141W. This may not sound like much (especially since we’re working with an estimate on the Gigabyte board), but as we’ve seen time and time again GK104 is power-limited in most scenarios. A good GPU can boost to higher bins than there is power available to allow it, which means increasing the power target in a roundabout way increases performance. We’ll see how this works in detail in our benchmarks, but for now it’s good enough to say that even with the same GPU overclock as Zotac the Gigabyte card is usually clocking higher.
Moving on, Gigabyte’s custom PCB measures 8.4” long, and in terms of design it doesn’t bear a great resemblance to either the reference GTX 680 PCB nor the reference GTX 670 PCB; as near as we can tell it’s completely custom. In terms of design it’s nothing fancy – though like the reference GTX 670 the VRMs are located in the front – and as we’ve said before the real significance is the higher power target it allows. Otherwise the memory layout is the same as the reference GTX 660 Ti with 6 chips on the front and 2 on the back. Due to its length we’d normally insist on there being some kind of stiffener for an open air card, but since Gigabyte has put the GPU back far enough, the heatsink mounting alone provides enough rigidity to the card.
Sitting on top of Gigabyte’s PCB is a dual fan version of Gigabyte’s new Windforce cooler. The Windforce 2X cooler on their GTX 660 Ti is a bit of an abnormal dual fan cooler, with a relatively sparse aluminum heatsink attached to unusually large 100mm fans. This makes the card quite large and more fan than heatsink in the process, which is not something we’ve seen before.
The heatsink itself is divided up into three segments over the length of the card, with a pair of copper heatpipes connecting them. The bulk of the heatsink is over the GPU, while a smaller portion is at the rear and an even smaller portion is at the front, which is also attached to the VRMs. The frame holding the 100mm fans is then attached at the top, anchored at either end of the heatsink. Altogether this cooling contraption is both longer and taller than the PCB itself, making the final length of the card nearly 10” long.
Finishing up the card we find the usual collection of ports and connections. 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. Meanwhile toolless case users will be happy to see that the heatsink is well clear of the bracket, so toolless clips are more or less guaranteed to work here.
Rounding out the package is the usual collection of power adapters and a quick start guide. While it’s not included in the box or listed on the box, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC works with Gigabyte’s OC Guru II overclocking software, which is available on Gigabyte’s website. Gigabyte has had OC Guru for a number of years now, and with this being the first time we’ve seen OC Guru II we can say it’s greatly improved from the functional and aesthetic mess that defined the previous versions.
While it won’t be winning any gold medals, in our testing OC Guru II gets the job done. Gigabyte offers all of the usual tweaking controls (including the necessary power target control), along with card monitoring/graphing and an OSD. It’s only real sin is that Gigabyte hasn’t implemented sliders on their controls, meaning that you’ll need to press and hold down buttons in order to dial in a setting. This is less than ideal, especially when you’re trying to crank up the 6000MHz memory clock by an appreciable amount.
Wrapping things up, the Gigebyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC comes with Gigabyte’s standard 3 year warranty. Gigabyte will be releasing it at an MSRP of $319, $20 over the price of a reference-clocked GTX 660 Ti and $10 less than the most expensive card in our roundup today.
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TheJian - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
660 can go to 1100/1200 as easily as the 7950 gets to 1150 (so another 10% faster)..Check the asus card I linked to before. You'll have a hard time catching the 660 no matter what, it costs you also as noted by anandtech, my comments on watts/cost/heat etc.Memory bandwidth isn't the issue. here and all of it overclocks fairly close. We don't run in 2560x1600. It's not the weakness. That is a misnomer perpetuated by Ryan beating it like a dead horse when only 2% of users use any res above 1920x1200. I just debunked that idea further by showing even monitors at newegg including 27 inchers don't use that res. IE, no, bandwidth isn't the problem. Bad review on ryan's part, and no conclusion is the problem. The CORE clock/boost is the thing when it's not an bandwidth issue, and it's already been shown to not be true.. LOL, yep, nvidia conspiracy, the minimums were used here to...ROFL. Good luck digging for things wrong with 660TI. Minimums are shown at hardocp, guru3d, anandtech and more. Strange thing you even brought this up with no proof.
The NV cards have only been upped 100mhz, which is about ~10%, not 20 like you say. 915/1114 isn't 20%. You CAN get there, but not in out of box exp. I'd guess nearly all of the memory will hit 6.6ghz. Common for 7970OC / gtx680 to hit 7+ghz.
Galidou - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
I said 20% because most of their cards are way above reference clocks, I was just representing the reality, not the reference thingys. When you can buy factory overclocked cards at the same price, let's say 10$ premium, mentioning the reference clocks is almost... useless. Plus over the internet, 80% of the reviews had factory overclocked cards so the performance we see everywhere and is in everyone's head, is close to 20% overclock has been done.So in fact there's maybe 10-15% of the juice left for fellow overclockers. I'm estimating, it could be more in the case of better chips. While the 7950 as we know it, has been reviewed everywhere on it's reference clocks/fan and if you take an aftermarket cooler and get, let's be honest and say 40%, it's far ahead in terms of comparison from the reference reviews we have.
And again and for the last time, it all depends on the games.
Galidou - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
When I look at things again and again. the memory bandwidth doesn't seem to be much of a problem. The only games where I can guess it could harm it is any new games that will come out with directx11 heavy graphics. Something that taxes the cards on every aspects, else than that, for now, the card doesn't seem to have any weaknesses at all.I never thought that for the moment it was a real weakness for it, the future will tell us but even there, 90% of the gamers plays at 1080p or less and 80% of that 90% pays less than 150$ for their video cards. For those paying more, it all depends on choosen side, games they play, overclocking or not and money they want to spend.
Remove overclocking of the way Nvidia wins almost everything by a good margin. Anyone playing 1080p won't be deceived by any 200$+ card if they are not so inclined playing everything on ultra with 8x MSAA.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
You're going to have a CRAP experience and stuttering junk on your eyefinity in between crashes.Come back and apologize to me, and then thejian can hang his head and tell you he tried to warn you.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Here's the WARNING for you again, with the 660Ti STOMPING your dreamy 7950 into the turf in Skyrim at 2560 x 1080http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia...
RussianSensation - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Hey Ryan,In Shogun 2 and Batman AC at 1080P almost none of the new cards are being stressed. I think you should increase the quality to Ultra for the new 2-3GB generation of cards even if the < 1.5GB VRAM cards suffer and bump AA to 8X in Batman. Otherwise all the cards have no problem passing these benchmarks. Same with SKYRIM, maybe think about adding heavy mods OR testing that game with SSAA or 8xAA at least. Even the 6970 is getting > 83 fps. Maybe you can start thinking of replacing some of these games. They aren't getting very demanding anymore for the new generation of cards.
Ryan Smith - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
Russian, it's unlikely that we'll ever bump AA up to 8x. I hate jaggies, but the only thing 8x AA does is to superficially slow things down; the quality improvement isn't even negligable. If 4x MSAA doesn't get rid of jaggies in a game, then the problem isn't MSAA.Consequently this is why we use SSAA on Portal 2. High-end cards are fast enough to use SSAA at a reasonable speed. Ultimately many of these games will get replaced in the next benchmark refresh, but if we need to throw up extra roadblocks in the future it will be in the form of TrSSAA/AAA or SSAA, just like we did with Portal 2.
Biorganic - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
I was speaking a bit on both. The article insinuates that the 660ti is on the same performance level as the 7950. The obvious caveat to your results is that it is ridiculously easy to overclock the 7950 by 35-45%, and GCN performance scales pretty well with clock increases. It should be noted in the article that the perf of 7950 OC'd is beyond what the 660ti can attain. Unless you guys can OC a 660ti sample by 30% or more.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Is this the exact same way we recommended the GTX460 reviews ? With some supermassive OC in the reviews, so we could really see what the great GTX 460 could do ?NO>>>>>>>
The EXACT OPPOSITE occurred here, by all of your type people.
Did we demand the 560Ti be OC'ed to show how it surpasses the amd series ? NOPE.
Did we go on and on about how massive the GTX580 gains were with OC even though it was already far, far ahead of all the amd cards with it's very low core clocks ? NOPE - here we heard power whines.
Did we just complain that the GTX680 is not even in the review while the 7970 is ?
Nope.
How about the GTX 470 or 480 ? Very low cores, where were all of you then demanding they be OC'ed because they gained massively.. ?
Huh, where were you ?
Galidou - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Performance scales pretty well on both design but AMD just is a little better at overclocking because it seems like the base clock is terribly underclocked. It just feels like that but that must be for power constraints and noise on reference designs.