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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CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
The 660Ti has a bios SUPER roxxor feature...in the MSI version.. ROFL !! hahahahttp://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Ti_...
It seems that MSI has added some secret sauce, no other board partner has, to their card's BIOS. One indicator of this is that they raised the card's default power limit from 130 W to 175 W, which will certainly help in many situations.
The card essentially uses the same power as other cards, but is faster - leading to improved performance per Watt.
Overclocking works great as well and reaches the highest real-life performance, despite not reaching the lowest GPU clock. This is certainly an interesting development. We will, hopefully, see more board partners pick up this change.
ROFL HAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAAA
So this is the one you want now Galidou.
" Pros: This thing is pretty amazing. Tried running Skyrim on Ultra, 2k textures, and 14 other visual mods. With this card, I ran it all with no lagg at all, with a temp under 67. Love it. "
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Galidou - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
Gibgabyte did the same, the board power is up to 180 watts if you tweak it and still both overclocked(my wife's gigabyte 660 ti OC and my 7950 sapphire 7950 OC) the 7950 wins hands down at 3 monitor resolution.How can you still trying to explain things when the only side of the medal you can speak of is Nvidia. Sorry, I see the good of both while you can't say a good thing about AMD. Both of my computer uses intel overclocked sandy bridge/ivy bridge K cpus, I'm no AMD fan but I can recognize I did the right thing and I did my research and having BOTH freaking cards in HANDS and testing them side by side with my 3570k @ 4,6ghz.
My 7950 wins @ 3 monitors in skyrim EASILY, you can't say anything to that because you ain't got both cards in hands. Geez, will you freaking understand some day. And no I ain't got any freaking problem with my drivers... And I paid the 7950 the same price than the gtx 660 ti. EXACT same price. 319$ before taxes.
Geez it's complicated when arguing with you because you ain't open to any opinions/facts other than: AMD IS CRAP, NVIDIA WINS EVERYTHING, AMD IS CRAP, NVIDIA WINS EVERYTHING, HERE'S MY LINK TO A WEBSITE THAT SHOWS THE 660TI WINNING AGAINST A 7970 AT EVERYTHING EVEN 6 MONITORS LOOK LOOK LOOK.
TheJian - Friday, August 24, 2012 - link
I was speaking to their finances. If you see in one of my other posts, I believed they deserved 20bil from Intel, but courts screwed them. That is part of what I meant. They deserved their profits and more. Tough to get profits when Intel is stealing them basically by blocking your products at every end.No comment was directed at "dumb" employees. I said it was hard to overcome, not easy. Also that they had the crown for 3 years and weren't allowed to get just desserts. I'm sorry you didn't get that from the posts. I like AMD. I just fear they're on their last financial leg. I've owned their stock 4 times over the last 10 years. There doesn't look like there will be a 5th is all I'm saying. I speak from a stock/company financial position sometimes since I've bought both and follow their income statements. I'm sure they're all great people that work there, no comment on them (besides management's mishandling of Dirk Meyer, ATI overpurchase).
felipetga - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
I have been holding to upgrade my GTX 460 256bits. I wonder if this card will be bottlenecked by my C2Q 9550 @ 3.6ghz....dishayu - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
It won't. You need to SLI/CF 2 top end cards for the processor to be a bottleneck.tipoo - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Only on some games, but the majority aren't as CPU intensive as they are GPU intensive, so it would still be a nice upgrade for you.Jamahl - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Do you realise that the majority of 660 Ti's being benchmarked at other techsites are overclocked vs the stock Radeons?Biorganic - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Exactly this. Anyone who follows these respective cards, 7950:670, 7970:680 etc knows that the AMD alternatives have excellent overclocking potential. All these reviews are comparing high clocked GTX vs stock or very conservatively boosted AMD cards. I can get my 7950 to 1000 mHz on stock voltage. That will destroy this toy they call a TI. Sorry but the results seem a bit biased.Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
"Sorry but the results seem a bit biased."Just so we're clear, are you talking about our article, or articles on other sites?
if it's the former, in case you've missed it we are explicitly testing a reference clocked GTX 660 Ti in the form of Zotac's card at reference clocks (this is hardware identical to their official reference clocked model).
mwildtech - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Biased?? This guy is an idiot. Anandtech is the least biased tech site on the interwebs. Ryan - awesome review! keep up the good work.