The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTSynthetics
We’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance to see if the reduction in ROP performance, L2 cache, and memory bandwidth had any kind of other impact we haven’t anticipated. We’ll start with 3DMark Vantage’s Pixel Fill test.
Assuming you have enough ROP throughput, the pixel fill test is about memory bandwidth. Unsurprisingly, the GTX 660 Ti is around 20% behind the GTX 670 here.
Our second test is 3DMark’s Texel Fill test, which as expected is insensitive to anything going on outside of the SMXes. The GTX 670 and GTX 660 Ti are tied here, reflecting the fact that they have equal theoretical texture throughput.
Our third theoretical test is the set of settings we use with Microsoft’s Detail Tessellation sample program out of the DX11 SDK
To be honest we’re not quite sure why there’s such a performance drop here relative to the GTX 670. On paper the geometry performance of the two should be identical. Either we’re ROP limited (this test does draw a lot of pixels at those framerates), or it really likes memory bandwidth. Regardless it’s an odd state of affairs to see NVIDIA losing a tessellation test to the 7870, considering how lopsided things were a year ago.
Our final theoretical test is Unigine Heaven 2.5, a benchmark that straddles the line between a synthetic benchmark and a real-world benchmark as the engine is licensed but no notable DX11 games have been produced using it yet.
Heaven proves to be rather sensitive to the ROP and memory changes. The performance hit is just shy of 20%.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Long story short, we were having CMS problems earlier so we were messing with the URL slugs. Not that the slugs actually matter, but it's been fixed.Belard - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Slugs are important for soil health. slimy and kind of icky looking... they are good to have.Natfly - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Not to mention search engine optimizationBelard - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I see that.... oops.bhima - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
You show $399, but the MSRP is $319.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
A lot of em are going for $299, but why put anything in there but RELEASE PRICE on the chart - that way you can show the GTX570 at $349.Bias ? You decide.
BoloMKXXVIII - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
blanarahul, very insiteful comment.The GTX 660 Ti seems like a good "bang for your buck" card. NVidia should count itself lucky for having trouble keeping up with demand. My worry is they lose focus with the number of markets they are trying to fill. Something I am sure AMD will be watching for.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Yes nVidia sure loses focus - uhh... loses focus...sales GREAT - loses focus...Biased stupidity ?
You decide.
What it means ?
No one knows.
Galidou - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
They're not loosing focus, it's a new strategy and it must work wonders. Instead of releasing new products as quickly as possible and fill the market with all the parts from low to high-end performance, they get out the new higher-end parts and rely on their last gen cards to fill the holes.Clean out the shelves so dealers don't get stuck with older technology not selling. And at the same time, not taxing new fabrication process(28nm in this case) by needing alot more to fill demand in every way.
Crazyeyeskillah - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
If they had released this at 249$ they would have never been able to supply the demand. . .why not just go for the jugular of amd? Oh yeah balance and perceived value in the market, only hurts us really.