The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda's epic sword & magic game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our RPG of choice for benchmarking. It's altogether a good CPU benchmark thanks to its complex scripting and AI, but it also can end up pushing a large number of fairly complex models and effects at once, especially with the addition of the high resolution texture pack.
For every Portal 2 you have a Skyrim, it seems. At 1920 the GTX 660 Ti actually does well for itself here, besting the 7900 series, but we know from experience that this is a CPU limited resolution. Cranking things up to 2560 and Ultra quality sends the GTX 660 Ti through the floor in a very bad way, pushing it well below even the 7870, never mind the 7900 series.
Altogether the GTX 660 Ti achieves about 80% of the performance of the GTX 670, making this another game that is hurt badly by the loss of a ROP block and memory bandwidth. At the same time the GTX 670 is the first NVIDIA card fast enough to compete with the 7950, so the GTX 660 Ti came into this benchmark with unfavorable odds. 68fps is more than playable, but hardcore Skyrim players are going to want to stick to cards with more memory bandwidth. At best, the bright spot for NVIDIA is that the GTX 660 Ti is nearly 100% faster than the GTX 560 Ti, a remarkable improvement, but also one being fueled by the meager 1GB of VRAM the latter has.
As for our factory overclocked cards, this is another case of Zotac leading the pack. Its memory overclock is exactly what’s needed to counter the GTX 660 Ti’s lack of memory bandwidth, which helps it easily clear EVGA and Gigabyte’s cards.
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RussianSensation - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Oops forgot to link it:$317 HD7950 MSI TF3 -- perfect for skyrim with mods:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=22616...
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
BUT IT LOST to the 660Ti, and the 660Ti even beats the 7970 LOLhttp://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia...
Oh well, time for a new game plan...
1300+ on 660Ti cores, exceeding 7950's and 7950's - R O F L goodbye amd
Ryan Smith - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
If you're going to be playing with memory-intensive mods then our Skyrim results at 2560 are going to be the most relevant. The 7870 would be appreciably faster here, but note that this is basically the only case in our entire benchmark suite where that happens (even Crysis has the two virtually tied). I suspect you'd be happy with either card, but if you intend to keep the card for a while and to play games other than Skyrim, I'd be hesitant to recommend the 7870.TheJian - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Not quite sure I understand...660TI is dominant in 1920x1200 in skyrim. I already showed from the hardware survey at steampowered.com <2% use your resolution of 2560x1600. I already pointed out 68 24in monitors at newegg (that's all of them by the way) don't recommend above 1920x1200/1080 for recommended res (native), 41 of the 27in monitors run the same, only 11 27in monitors on newegg recommend a resolution even near your 2560x1600 (it's 1440 on those 11), the rest of the other 41 27in models are also 1920x1080...Who do you think runs at this 2650x1600 res? It's a res used by a small % of the 2% I've just mentioned. You have to buy a 30in before this is useful info. Is this guy running a 30in? Crysis, tied? You talking warhead from an old engine from 2008 or what? See my other posts, you need to rewrite your conclusion and stop acting like there are more than 2% in the world using 2560x1600. I already proved this wrong many times in here in the comments on this article! Got any evidence skyrim is better for this guy? His link where nothing is explained? I believe he's testing at REF speeds for the 660TI since nothing is mentioned about what he runs the tests at (after translating the whole thing through google) . He has multiple cards but only 1 660TI in the test once he gets to the alan wake page and gaming tests. Again though, 1920x1080 the card is great. But still I have no idea of the clockspeed of the ONE card in the 3 card charts. Only ArmA2,Metro2033 seems to be a victory for 7950 (again at what speed?). I can't find evidence it's not all based on reference. But if you go by your benchmarks, hardocp, guru3d etc...It's clear who wins at the res 98% of us use. Our can you point me to 2560x1600 data showing otherwise? 2560x1600 isn't used. I pointed out all the monitors at newegg...Steampowered survey...Where is evidence it's used?
Burticus - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
The 570 is included in the benchmarks which the 660TI just slaps down. Why no 580?I can pick up a used EVGA 580 for $250, so I am curious. I like the sound of the Gigabyte 660TI but it's $319... is it worth $70 more than a 580? Yes I know power consumption will be lower and it will be less noisy.
Roland00Address - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Here are the resultshttp://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/647?vs=517
rarson - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
Yeah, bench is sometimes even more useful than the benchmark charts in product reviews (especially when the review was written by Jarred).Galidou - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
When you look at power and temperature bars at the bottom, it's plain amazing! They surely got the sweet spot this time. Thinking the 660 ti performs a little better but such a difference in power usage, there's not much to say about it except it's plain extraordinary.Ryan Smith - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
The GTX 570 was included since at current prices the GTX 660 Ti is more or less replacing that card. I do not know of many people who would be considering a GTX 660 Ti as a GTX 580 replacement.beastyben1 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I see 11 different models that just became available - not a soft launch.The Galaxy's cooler looks quite interesting and has a pretty beefy heatsink.