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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CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia...ROFLMAO - the ONLY REASON you say you wanted the 7950 and it LOSES.
There's the level of "your cred", you freaking loser.
Galidou - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link
This is only the point of the iceberg when we speak about credibility. Anandtech was nice enough to have a stock clocked part, we can't say that for most of the reviews on the internet.I even got on a website ''not gonna say it, could be too much shame for them'' that was comparing a non reference 660ti overclocked with... suspense... a 7850. And then some times in the review offered an ''alternative analysis'' against a 6870, who's dirty now?
I won't name any but of all the review sites I usually read, they were all testing overclocked cards (plus the included Nvidia boost) against stock clocked AMD cards, ALL of them... Only one included minimum frame rates to all of the games tested which was interesting to see the limiting bandwidth acting at certain points. One can only wonder if the games released won't have any problem with that.
I first came here on anand and almost pulled the trigger buying one RIGHT after finishing reading. Then I visited my other sites and it got all messed up. Anand didn't have minimum frames everywhere, others had different results, the games I play switch from one brand to another for the ''best bang for my bucks''.
With all that mixed up mess, one can only wonder where the ''real'' truth is. I'll probably just end up buying a 7950 overclocking it 40-50% higher and not wonder about future games. At least I waited long enough to see the 660ti. Anyway the other reviewers had quite good result with the 7950 and it was STOCK omg 40-50% overclock can't give a bad performance...
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
*OC 660ti's on newegg and only 3 Stock.The author pointed out there is no default version, and Partners have a somewhat free reign on released clocks.
Now be a good person and go look for yourself, you'll have a hard time finding a stock card vs an OC oob card.
I'd also like to see that 40-50% 7950 OC....(methinks you really spewed overboard there)
Reviews are noting a 17%-22% max performance gain on maximum 7950 OC, and that does not mean it's stable, except on a sole rider, non internet server, spanking clean, just defragged, built for benching, top of the line components, reviewer super massive rig.
So, can we get that 50% OC bench set from you ?
NO, of course we can't.
Galidou - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
My friend bought the Twin frozr 3 while it was on special on newegg(300$ a week ago). overclocked 1150/1700 stable that's a 44% overclock and he could go higher, with the stock cooler. We reported gains of around 30 to 36% performance gain in games.On newegg, there's plenty of people reporting 1150 to 1200 core overclock, because it is in fact a 7970 board at a very cheap price. If you really can't accept one good thing about AMD that's where I differ from you.
The thing is, Nvidia won this round for the average user, most of us don't overclock and are not fiddling with voltages and such. Including a nice boost is good for those average users, the fact is and whatever you might say, overclockers know it. AMD is very overclocker friendly this gen, end of the line, cry about it some more, it doesn't change the fact that they already know it, sorry. If you tried to misinform the people, you're too late, it's already circulating on the internet my friend.
Now you shall say and I've heard it: ''People have been able to get their gtx680 overclocked to 1300 core in some cases so they are..........''. I know the drill, 680 has for the most part, a boost clock of around 1100 - 1150 boost clock. Lemme translate that, 200mhz overclock on a 1100 boost clock, 18% overclock on the cherry picked 680, because I'm comparing it with a 7950 which didn't pass the 7970 requirement.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Oh look at that, I didn't use a single fact again.you're pathetic.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
the 660Ti's are hitting 1300+ cores.you're losing at stock out of the box in your highest triple monitor rez dummy
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/16/nvidia...
Keep attacking like the fool you are.
Now you may apologize profusely and thankme for saving you from your brainwashed amd embolism you claim to have acquired at overclock net
thebluephoenix - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Cerise, as a punishment i would make you read few nvidia related articles at site called Semi Accurate to see why is so wrong to be biased idiotic crazy fanboy.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Charlie is a liar, I am not. Deal with it.Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Everyone is a liar but you Cerise, all hail to you ohh great hardware god, I'm still waiting for news of you on Overclock.net you almighty owner of all the knowledge.Come and teach the nitrogen overclockers of the world about your so great knowledge about video card.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Yes, time for you to bow down, then thank me for having to correct you three times already, on the FACTS.