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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PCTC2 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Pricing for GTX 660 Ti cards will start at $299, continuing NVIDA’s tidy hierarchyNVIDIA, not NVIDA.
PCTC2 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
It's on page 2PCTC2 - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I meant page 1. It's too early in the morning.haukionkannel - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
660ti is not bad, 7870 custom cooler version is very tough competitor. I allso would like to see factory overclocked version of AMD card in the same test, but all in all it seems to be close call.Nvidia definitely needs a cart to 200-300$. But it seems to be so that we have to wait untill 700 series for that?
RussianSensation - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Not even. I don't think a 7870 is a competitor since it goes for $250-260 on Newegg. The real competitor is a $320-330 HD7950.MatthiasP - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I don't get why Nvidia keeps ignoring the 200$ market. With economies in Europe and the US going down, i doubt that 300$ cards will be important for the mainstream market. And even there, the 7950 seems to be the better choice.Roland00Address - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
They are ignoring that market for they can't make money with it right now. Right now they are facing a shortage of 28nm wafers for TSMC can't produce enough chips right now. They usually make the most money with the $100 to $250 cards for they usually make money on selling high volume cards with low to medium profit.But due to the shortage of 28nm wafers they have decided to only target markets that are low volume and high selling price. Because of this there majority of 28nm wafers are going for the notebook chips they are producing (the 620m to 660m all have 28nm versions). They leftover spare chips they have are going to the gtx680, gtx670, and now gtx660ti which they make a lot of profit on.
Now there is a gt640 on the market right now, but it uses the same die as the 640m le to 660m, so any chips that can't make laptop grade due to not matching the 25w to 50w tdp will be reused in a desktop chip that can be up to 75w tdp where they will be sold at a final street cost of $100. $100 dollars for a 118mm^2 gpu is outrageous considering the 6670 has the same die size but is made on 40nm, outperforms it, uses less energy, and is cheaper.
You won't see a gt640 with gddr5, gt650, or a gtx660 (non ti) until nvidia gets more 28nm wafers. (You also won't see nvidia making 28nm tegras until they get more wafers even if the design for tegra4/wayne was finished right now.) Right now nvidia is a victim of its own success where it is selling every 28nm product it can make, so since it can't make any more 28nm products due to its suppliers and facing a shortage it might as well maximize its profits. $300 to $500 dollar cards maximize profits, Laptop Gpus maximize profits.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
" I don't get why Nvidia keeps ignoring the 200$ market. "560
560Ti
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460 SLI
560 SE SLI
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" I do get why amd fans pretend there are no nVidia cards "
TheJian - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Not ignoring it. They can't keep up with demand at $300. Your card is coming, but not until they can get more chips (more failed $300 ones?) so they can created a $200 card.Sorry already debunked your 7950 being the better choice. Ignore 2560x1600 and it's not even close. That being said, if you use a 30in monitor, maybe you can argue the 2560x1600, but it's a wash at that level as far as I can see. GTX 660 TI wins many times even in Anandtech's, etc..
thebeastie - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I do almost all my gaming on my Sony HMZ-T1 in the standard 720P resolution, so would be great to see what FPS you get in slightly lower resolutions, especially since this is a card aimed at the lower end of the market.Would be great if you could start doing some 3D FPS benchmarks as well because there is a difference in performance again when you ad 3D rendering to any particular resolution.