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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
313 Comments
View All Comments
badnvidia - Thursday, December 13, 2012 - link
I have purchased 2 of the new Nvidia 600 series, a gtx 660 ti, which runs fine this far, but I would question if it was worth it's cost. I purchased a second cheaper gtx 650 because cost with the promised free download of Assassins Creed III made it best choice for second computer video card. The game download promotion is a lie, tigerdirect codes are not being honored by Nvidia and I informed tigerdirect but they are still selling these cards with the promise of free game download. This is a dishonest promotion by both firms, Beware!Why support firms that are promoting these video cards with a dishonest promotion. If the free download promotion has exceeded its allotment, then both firms should stop advertising it and promising a free game download they know is not going to be honored. Shame on them for promoting such lies to customers at Christmas. I will never buy from them again.
Ajish - Sunday, March 17, 2013 - link
pls help... i have i3 2100,2 HDDs , 6 GB RAM, Corsair CX 500W psu....h61 mobo...... which one is best 660ti or 7850....both 2gb memory....m asking...... pls help.....shuko666 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
mi tarjeta de video es una gtx 660 ti 1g DDR5 SE ME PONEE AL 100 % EL CONSUMO ES BUENO O MALOO? Y SE ME CALIENTA LA PC A 65 GRADOS DICEN QUE ES NORMAL PERO SE ME ME BAJAN LOS FPS EN VARIOS JUEGOS Y PUES SE SIENTE LENTA LA PC. ALGUNOS ME DICEN QUE LE PONGA UN SEIDON PARA EL CALENTAMIENTO. Y TENGO UUN PROCESADOR FX 8 3.10 3120 8GB DE RAM 1337 HZ FUENTE DE PODER 550 COOLMASTER 500 DE DISCO DURO. ALGUNA SOLUCION SERA AGRADECIDA