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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TheJian - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
You forgot to mention the extra heat, noise and watts it takes to do that 1250mhz. Catching NV's cards isn't free in any of these regards as the 7950 BOOST edition already shows vs. even the zotac Amp version of the 660ti.AMD fanboys might call these features these days I guess...
Galidou - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
7950 boost is a reference board, as we said before, 4 out of 18 boards are reference on newegg. It's unlikely people will buy reference cooler from AMD because they're plain bad if you overclock. Will people putting the reference design out of the way when speaking about overclock....Noise and temperature when overclocked on either for example Twin Frozr3 from MSI or sapphire OC are ALOT more silent and cool even fully overclocked....
TheJian - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Nearly every card on newegg is OC'd by manufacturer and the top listed boost isn't even the top it can do by default which os a Nice.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
The GTX 580 was already way ahead, so it didn't have to catch up to 6970. When OC'ed it was so far ahead it was ridiculous.That's why all the amd fans had a hissy fit when the 680 came out - it won on power - frames, features, price - all they could whine about was it wasn't "greatly faster" than last gen (finally admitting of course the 580 STOMPED the pedal to the floor, held it there, and blew the doors off everything before it).
See, these are the types of bias that always rear their ugly little hate filled heads.
Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
''ugly little hate filled heads''The sentence speaks for itself about who's writing it, you're one of them sorry, if it wasn't so filled with hate maybe I could pass but.... no.
It won for the first time on power/performance, let'S not do like it has always been like that.... and before even if they didn't win on that front you speak like they won on everything forever. There's nothing good about AMD we already know your opinion, you don'T have to spread some more hatred on the subject, we know it.
Just do yourself a favor, stop lacking respect to others for something everyone already knows about you, you hate AMD end of the line.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
You were wrong again and made a completely false comparison, and got called on it.Should I just call you blabbering idiot instead of hate filled biased amd fanboy ?
How about NEITHER, and you keeping the facts straight ?
HEY !
That would actually be nice, but you're not nice.
Galidou - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
You didn't get the point of the memory controller/memory quantity they said here, poor newbie, let me explain things for you. On GCN there's 6 64bit memory bus, now divide 3gb of memory into 6, bingo 512mb each controller. Now take 2gb of memory and divide it by 3 memory bus of the 660 ti(192bit), ohhh you can't do this, what that means is there are 2 64 bit buses that takes care of a 512mb chip and the 2 other memory buses take care of 2x512 memory each.Asynchronous memory may not be that bad, it isn't a weirdo theory either, my little girl that's 10 years old would understand it if I would explain her that simple mathematical equation. Mr Cogburn the expert with less logic than a 10 y old girl... what are you doing here, you'Re so good, maybe you should join us at overclock.net and discuss with some pro overclockers and show us your results of your cpu/gpu on nitrogen if you're so pro about hardware.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Wow, and to think you just said you couldn't support the hatred, but there you go spreading your hatred again.The author is WRONG. Be a man and face the facts.
Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
I didn't use a damn word that lacked of respect to you in all my previous posts unlike you calling me dummy, stupid, and so on in some previous post. You used words nazi, evil, and so on against AMD but I'm the one who spread the HATE LOL COMON.Don't try me, you are the most disrespectful, but still knowledgeable, person I've ever seen at your times. You expect me to stay totally cold all the time in face of the fact you diminish and attack people calling them names because they are Fanboys.... COMON.
I speak once against your logic but every post you have is full of hatred and attack to people but ohhh when I say something ONCE, it's BAD. COMON.... Well I know it wasn't my best one and I offer you my dearest excuses, I truly am sorry. I was at the end of the roll, you're hard to follow, using everything you can to make us feel like AMD is realted to cancer, hell, nazis and such while I have a 4870 and 6850 crossfire that served me well.
Imagine someone attacking and diminishing the user of a product because he uses the said product and you're one owner of that said product. Someone lacking of respect to YOU in every way because you use that thing and you actually like it and it served you well, you had no problem with it but still he can't stop and almost tries to make you beleive that if you bought that, it'S because you are plain stupid. You'd be mad, well that's what you make feel to most of AMD users the way you speak of them.
I'm sorry for being such an ass comparing your logic to my 10 years old daughter while I know you're more logical than her. But you should really be sorry to any AMD video card owner that reads you because you really make em beleive AMD is the devil and their products are worthless while they're not.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Don't start out with a big lie, and you won't hear from me in the way you don't like to hear or see.You've got yourself convinced, you already did your research, you've said so, you've told yourself a pile of lies, WELL KEEP YOUR LIES TO YOURSELF THEN, in your own head, swirling around, instead of laying them on here then making up every excuse when you get called on them !
Pretty simple dude.
Here' let me help you, this is you talking:
" I've been brainwashed at overclockers and all the amd fanboys there have convinced me to "get into OC" and told me a dozen lies, half of which I blindly and unthinkingly repeated here as I attacked the guy who knew what he was talking about and proved me wrong, again and again. I hate him, and want him to do what I say, not what he does. I want to remain wrong and immensley biased for all the wrong reasons, because being an amd fanboy is my fun no matter how many falsehoods I spew that are very easily smashed by someone, whom I claim, doesn't know a thing after they prove me wrong, again and again".
Hey dude, be an amd fanboy, just don't spew out those completely incorrect falsehoods, that's all. Not that hard is it ?
LOL
Yeah, it's really, really hard not to, otherwise, you'd have a heckuva time having a single point.
I get it. I expect it from you people. You've got no other recourse.
Honestly it would be better to just say I like AMD and I'm getting it because I like AMD and I don't care about anything but that.