The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTThe First TXAA Game & The Test
With the release of the NVIDIA’s 304.xx drivers a couple of months ago, NVIDIA finally enabled driver support on Kepler for their new temporal anti-aliasing technology. First announced with the launch of Kepler, TXAA is another anti-aliasing technology to be developed by Timothy Lottes, an engineer in NVIDIA’s developer technology group. In a nutshell, TXAA is a wide tent (>1px) MSAA filter combined with a temporal filter (effectively a motion-vector based frame blend) that is intended to resolve that pesky temporal aliasing that can be seen in motion in many games.
Because TXAA requires MSAA support and motion vector tracking by the game itself, it can only be used in games that specifically implement it. Consequently, while NVIDIA had enabled driver support for it, they’ve been waiting on a game to be released that implements it. That release finally happened last week with a patch for the MMO The Secret World, which became the first game with TXAA support.
This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive review of TXAA (MMOs and deterministic testing are like oil and water), but seeing as how this is the first time TXAA has been enabled we did want to comment on it.
On the whole, what NVIDIA is trying to accomplish here is to implement movie-like anti-aliasing at a reasonable performance cost. Traditionally SSAA would be the solution here (just like it is to most other image aliasing problems), but of course SSAA is much too expensive most of the time. At its lower setting it is just 2x MSAA plus the temporal component, which makes the process rather cheap.
Unfortunately by gaming standards it’s also really blurry. This is due to the combination of the wide tent MSAA samples – which if you remember your history, ATI tried at one time – and the temporal filter blending data from multiple frames. TXAA does a completely fantastic job of eliminating temporal and other forms of aliasing, but it does so at a notable cost to image clarity.
Editorially speaking we’ll never disparage NVIDIA for trying new AA methods – it never hurts to try something new – however at the same time we do reserve the right to be picky. We completely understand the direction NVIDIA went with this and why they did it, especially since there’s a general push to make games more movie-like in the first place, but we’re not big fans of the outcome. You would be hard pressed to find someone that hates jaggies more than I (which is why we have SSAA in one of our tests), but as an interactive medium I have come to expect sharpness, sharpness that would make my eyes bleed. Especially when it comes to multiplayer games, where being able to see the slightest movement in the distance can be a distinct advantage.
To that end, TXAA is unquestionably an interesting technology and worth keeping an eye on in the future, but practically speaking AMD’s efforts to implement complex lighting cheaply on a forward renderer (and thereby making MSAA cheap and effective) are probably more relevant to improving the state of AA. But this is by no means the final word, and we’ll certainly revisit TXAA in detail in the future once it’s enabled on a game that offers a more deterministic way of testing image quality.
The Test
NVIDIA’s GTX 660 Ti launch drivers are 305.37, which are a further continuation of the 304.xx branch. Compared to the previous two 304.xx drivers there are no notable performance changes or bug fixes that we’re aware of.
Meanwhile on the AMD side we’re continuing to use the Catalyst 12.7 betas released back in late June. AMD just released Catalyst 12.8 yesterday, which appear to be a finalized version of the 12.7 driver.
On a final note, for the time being we have dropped Starcraft II from our tests. The recent 1.5 patch has had a notable negative impact on our performance (and disabled our ability to play replays without logging in every time), so we need to further investigate the issue and likely rebuild our entire collection of SC2 benchmarks.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Monitor: |
Samsung 305T Asus PA246Q |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7950B AMD Radeon HD 7970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Superclocked Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 304.79 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 305.37 AMD Catalyst 12.7 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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rarson - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
I might have said that ten years ago, but when I read stuff like "the GTX 680 marginalized the Radeon HD 7970 virtually overnight," I wonder what kind of bizarro universe I've stumbled into.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
That's the sales numbers referred to there rarson - maybe you should drop the problematic amnesia ( I know you can't since having no clue isn't amnesia), but as a reminder, amd's crap card was $579 bucks and beyond and nVidia dropped in 680 at $499 across the board...Amd was losing sales in rapid fashion, and the 680 was piling up so many backorders and pre-purchases that resellers were gbegging for relief, and a few reviewers were hoping something could be done to stem the immense backorders for the 680.
So:
" "the GTX 680 marginalized the Radeon HD 7970 virtually overnight,"
That's the real world, RECENT HISTORY, that real bizarro world you don't live in, don't notice, and most certainly, will likely have a very difficult time admitting exists.
Have a nice day.
Biorganic - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
Go look up Bias in a dictionary instead of flinging around insults like a child. When the adults converse amongst themselves they like to Add things to the actual conversation, not unnecessarily degrade people. Thanks! @$$-OJamahl - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
The point I was making was that Nvidia has seeded overclocked cards to the majority of the tech press, while you had a go at AMD for their 7950 boost.After all the arguments and nonsense over the 7950 boost, hardly anyone benchmarked it but still plenty went ahead and benched the overclocked cards sent by Nvidia. Two AMD partners have shown they are releasing the 7950 boost edition asap, prompting a withdrawal of the criticisms from another nvidia fansite, hardwarecanucks.com
So again I ask, AMD's credibility? The only credibility at stake is the reviewers who continually bend over to suit Nvidia. Nvidia has no credibility to lose.
silverblue - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link
I'm afraid I have to back you up on this one. NVIDIA released not one, not two but THREE GT 640s, and I think people have forgotten about that one. AMD have replaced the 7950 BIOS and as such have overclocked it to the performance level where it probably should've been to start with (the gap between 7950 and 7970 was always far more than the one between 7870 and 7950).Yes, AMD should've given it a new name - 7950 XT as I said somewhere recently - but it's not even two-thirds as bad as the GT 640 fiasco. At least this time, we're talking two models separated only by a BIOS change and the consequently higher power usage, not two separate GPU generations with vastly different clocks, shader counts, memory types and so on.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, however I don't understand how AMD's GPU division's credibility could be damaged by any of this. Feel free to educate me. :)
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
For your education and edification: amd failed in their card release by clocking it too low because they had lost the power useage war(and they knew it), and charging way too much on release.They suck, and their cred is ZERO, because of this.
Now it not only harmed amd, it harmed all of us, and all their vender partners, we all got screwed and all lost money because of amd's greed and incompetence.
Now amd, in a desperate panic, and far too long after the immense and debilitating blunder, that also left all their shareholders angry (ahem), after dropping the prices in two or three steps and adding 3 games to try to quell the massive kicking their falling sales to nVidia injuries...
FINALLY pulled their head out of it's straight jacket, well, halfway out, and issued permission for a GE version.
Now, maybe all you amd fans have been doing much and very excessive lying on 78xx79xx OC capabilities, or amd is just dumb as rocks and quite literally dangerous to themselves, the markets, their partners, all of us.
I think it's a large heaping of BOTH.
So there we have it - amd cred is where amd fanboy cred is - at the bottom of the barrel of slime.
Galidou - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Anyway, with you AMD fails, always failed and will continue to fail at everything... I don't know if you think people will read your posts like religious madmans and beleive it a 100%, you're making it so exagerated, that it's barely readable.The words nazi and such comes back so often when you go on the madman route, that it's a wonder if anyone gives you any credibility. A little sad because you have nice arguments, you just display them surrounded by so much hate, it's hard to give you any credit for them.
We do exagerate AMD's performance just for the sake of being fanboys, but not to the point of saying such debilitating stuff like you're so good at it. Not to the point of totally destroying Nvidia and saying it's worth NOTHING like you do for AMD. I may lean a little on AMD's side because for my money they gave me more performance from the radeon 4xxx to the 6xxx series. I won't forget my 8800gt either, that was a delight for the price too. But I can recon when a video card wins at EVERYTHING and is doing WONDERS and none is happening now, it's a mixed bag of feeling. between overclockability, optimization on certain games, etc...
When the 8800gt and radeon 4870 came out, there was nothing people could say, just nothing, for the price, they were wonders, trampling over anythingbefore and after but at the same time you said they were mistake because they were not greedy enough moves.
Wanna speak about greed, why is Nvidia so rich, you defend the most rich video card maker in history but you accuse the others of being greedy, society is built on greed, go blame others. Couldn't they sell their GPU at lower prices to kill AMD and be less greedy? No, if AMD die, you'll see greed and 800$ gpus, speak about greed.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Didn't read your loon spiel, again, not even glossed, part of 1st sentence.I won't tell you to shut up or change what you say, because I'm not a crybaby like you.
AMD sucks, they need help, and they only seem to fire more people.
Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
To date your best argument that repeats itself is ''AMD sucks'' which is something you learn to say when you're a kid. You're not a crybaby ohhh that's new, you keep crying more than everyone else I've seen, TheJian might be a fanboy but you're more related to the fanatic side of the thing.Still, they are the most rich video maker in history, but they still try to manipulate opinions like every company does. Why? if their product is so good and perfect, why do they have to manipulate? I hear you already saying something like: It's because that AMD suck, they suck so much that Nvidia has to make em suck even more by manipulating the stoopid reviewers because the world is against Nvidia and I'm their Crusader.... good job.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Yes, I've never crapload of facts nor a single argument of note, and your head is a bursting purple strawberry too mr whiner.