The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition
Our next GTX 660 Ti of the day is Zotac’s entry, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition. As indicated by the AMP branding (and like the other cards in this review) it’s a factory overclocked card; in fact it has the highest factory overclock of all the cards we’re reviewing today, with both a core and memory overclock.
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti Partner Card Specification Comparison | ||||||
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti(Ref) | EVGA GTX 660 Ti Superclocked | Zotac GTX 660 Ti AMP! | Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti OC | |||
| Base Clock | 915MHz | 980MHz | 1033MHz | 1033MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 980MHz | 1059MHz | 1111MHz | 1111MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 6008MHz | 6008MHz | 6608MHz | 6008MHz | ||
| Frame Buffer | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | ||
| TDP | 150W | 150W | 150W | ~170W | ||
| Width | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | ||
| Length | N/A | 9.5" | 7.5" | 10,5" | ||
| Warranty | N/A | 3 Year | 3 Year + Life | 3 Year | ||
| Price Point | $299 | $309 | $329 | $319 | ||
Zotac will be shipping the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP at 1033MHz for the base clock and 1111MHz for the boost clock. This represents a sizable 118MHz (13%) base overclock, and a 131MHz (13%) boost overclock. Meanwhile Zotac will be shipping their memory at 6.6GHz, a full 600MHz (10%) over the reference GTX 660 Ti. The latter overclock will stand to be very important, as we’ve already noted the GTX 660 Ti is starting off life as a memory bandwidth crippled card. Power consumption willing, the GTX 660 Ti AMP is in a good position to pick up at least 10% on performance relative to the reference GTX 660 Ti.
Like the EVGA card we just took a look at, Zotac’s GTX 660 Ti is based on NVIDIA’s reference board, so we’ll skip the details here. Rather than using a blower like EVGA however, Zotac is using an open air cooler – dubbed the dual silencer – that is well suited for a board of this length. The cooler uses a pair of 70mm fans, mounted over an aluminum heatsink that runs nearly the entire length of the card. Attaching the heatsink to the GPU itself is a trio of copper heatpipes, which transfer heat from the GPU to various points on the heatsink. Meanwhile the VRMs are cooled by a smaller, separate heatsink that fits under the primary heatsink; given the size and the location, it’s hard to say just how well this secondary heatsink is being cooled.
Altogether the card measures just 7.5” in length, an otherwise itty-bity card made just a bit longer thanks to some overhang from Zotac’s cooler. Zotac advertises their dual silencer as being 10C cooler and 10dB quieter than the competition, and while this may strictly be true when compared to some blowers, it’s not appreciably different than the dual-fan open air heatsinks that are extremely common on the market today. In fact among all of the cards we’re reviewing today this is unquestionably the most standard of them, as Zotac and several other NVIDIA partners will be shipping reference clocked cards built very similar to this. For this reason we’ll be using Zotac’s card as our reference card for the purpose of our testing.
Moving on, power and display connectivity is the same as with the GTX 670 and other cards using NVIDIA’s PCBs. This means 2 PCIe power sockets and 2 SLI connectors on the top, and 1 DL-DVI-D port, 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 full size HDMI 1.4 port, and 1 full size DisplayPort 1.2 on the front.
Rounding out the package is the usual collection of molex power adapters and quickstart guides, along with a trial version of Trackmania Canyon. However the real star of the show as far as pack-in games goes will be Borderlands 2 through NVIDIA’s launch offer.
Wrapping things up, Zotac is attaching a $329 MSRP to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP, which makes it a full $30 more expensive than reference-clocked cards and reflecting the greater factory overclock. This also makes it the most expensive card in today’s review by $10. Meanwhile for the warranty Zotac is offering a base 2 year warranty, which is extended to a rather generous full limited lifetime warranty upon registration of the card.
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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.