The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Review: GK106 Fills Out The Kepler Family
by Ryan Smith on September 13, 2012 9:00 AM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance to see if NVIDIA’s core configuration has had any impact on basis performance metrics. We’re expecting to see performance very close to the GTX 660 Ti, due to its nearly identical ROP/L2/memory configuration. We’ll start with 3DMark Vantage’s Pixel Fill test.
3DMark Vantage’s pixel fill test likes memory bandwidth and ROP performance in that order, which makes these results a bit odd. With identical memory bandwidth between them we’d expect the GTX 660 and GTX 660 Ti to at least be tied here, if not a slight lead for the GTX 660 thanks to its higher ROP performance. Instead the GTX 660 trails the GTX 660 Ti by a slight amount, an outcome we can’t explain at this time.
Our texture fillrate benchmark on the other hand sees a large gap between the GTX 660 and GTX 660 Ti, which is what we would expect from the loss of SMXes.
Our third theoretical test is the set of settings we use with Microsoft’s Detail Tessellation sample program out of the DX11 SDK
Despite the loss of SMXes (and thereby Polymorph engines), our tessellation benchmarks don’t show any kind of significant difference between the GTX 660 and GTX 660 Ti. We’ve been finding this benchmark to be surprisingly sensitive to ROP performance and memory bandwidth on Kepler, and these results back that finding.
Our final theoretical test is Unigine Heaven 2.5, a benchmark that straddles the line between a synthetic benchmark and a real-world benchmark as the engine is licensed but no notable DX11 games have been produced using it yet.
Despite its advanced nature, Heaven isn’t particularly sensitive to the loss of shader and texturing performance, as signified by the performance loss of less than 10% for the GTX 660.
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Galidou - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Whenever I see CeriseCogburn commenting, Chizow is not, and vice versa....If you never heard about price fixing, sorry for you but it's a fact, THAT is a fact, people don't have to beleive in that, it's happening right now and always has been and beleive me it will continue, because almost every company in the world is greedy even if it means communicating with the competition to maximize profit....
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Gal, you silly gal, Chizow knows a lot more than I do, but I'll say this, you're an insane and incorrect amd fanboy of the worst kind.I hope david's butt remains a delicacy to you, even after the corpse is buried, which is, by the way, to happen, very soon.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Galidou, you win NOTHING for being a lying sack, then whining when someone is so sick of your complete bs, they offend your idiot retarded estrogen doused amd licking being because they aren't a sick lying gasbag biased amd pig.Glad that religious Bible story has you kissing david amd's tokus furiously though, as that surely commands respect.
LOL
NOT !
Oh, were you insulted ?
Let's hope so, because of course, you tell so many lies, it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to not be insulted.
rarson - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
AMD's pricing doesn't need to be defended because anyone with a grasp of basic economics can easily understand why they priced them the way they did. That's why most people are ignoring your inane and mind-bogglingly stupid comments."How do you feel now about those $550, $450, and $350 pricepoints you so vigorously defended when the 7970/7950/7870 launched?"
Absolutely fine, dumbass, because it's September now. Duh.
"So just as I asked then"
Nobody cares, dude. Go fanboy somewhere else.
chizow - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Yes anyone with a basic grasp of economics would never have defended the worst increase in price and performance in the last decade and then be OK with the biggest price drop in the least amount of time within the same generation. AMD now holds the notorious distinction for both and their fanboys (like you) get to suffer the consequences.How much did the GTX 580 cost 15 months after release? $500 still dumbass, duh, now go fanboy somewhere else? Parts like this don't lose their value unless they suck, or their pricing sucks, or both, but obviously you're too oblivious or stupid to realize this, or maybe you're just accustomed to it as an AMD fan.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
You're an idiot.AMD cost me plenty, and I will NEVER fall for your stupid amd lies, ever again.
Klimax - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
A thing: Dirt Showdown is AMD game using DC codepath optimised ONLY for Radeons severly penalising nVidia's cards. It is not valid for any comparsions.(At least not with that option enabled)
chizow - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Just wondered if there was any news about price drops for higher-end SKUs. It becomes more obvious with every newly released SKU that the original asking prices from both AMD and Nvidia on 28nm parts were far too high. $350 for a 7870 looks like a complete debacle at this point given a $229 part outperforms it just a few months later.Also it looks like the Summer 2012 GPU pricing chart needs to be adjusted for the GTX 660 (it shows $239).
Thanks for the commentary on page 3 about Nvidia's Competition. Much like Intel, they still need to compete with themselves to entice owners of their previous products to upgrade. I'm glad someone else gets it, its pretty obvious Nvidia does as well. I guess they heard the complaints of all their enthusiasts when asking $500 flagship dollars for a part based on a midrange ASIC.
RussianSensation - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
A couple months?HD7850 - $249 March 3, 2012
HD7870 - $349 March 3, 2012
GTX660 - $229 September 13, 2012
It's been 7 months.
Someone who bought an HD7850 and OCed it enjoyed ~ GTX580 / HD7950 level of performance for 7 months now. Using the same exact logic you have just outlined, then we should recommend people to wait 7 more months for HD8000 series and skip GTX660 because for them the 660 would be an "early adopter" premium vs. HD8870. See how illogical your comment is?
GPUs often drop in price over time as the generation goes on.
Interesting how GTX280 for $649 and GTX260 $399 weren't a problem for you.
chizow - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Except we've already covered this pricing debacle months ago, pretty sure you were onboard then, what happened since then?The 7870 was already vastly overpriced because it offered 6970/GTX 570 at.....6970 and GTX 570 prices. Parts that were already widely available for at least 20 months prior to the 7870's launch at the exact same prices. Anyone who already had that performance level would have no incentive to sidegrade to a 7870 at that pricepoint.
What is obvious now as it was then is that there was no movement in terms of price:performance that you would expect from a new generation, the metric didn't shift at all for 28nm until Kepler launched. Now that Kepler has finally trickled down to this performance level, its that much more clear. Bringing your 8870 argument into the fold, I wouldn't agree with that view either as I would expect the 8870 to offer more performance at a lower pricepoint, not the same performance at the same price as is the case with the 7870 at launch.
I don't know why you're trying to defend AMD's horrid 28nm pricing but the fact of the matter is, the current pricing structure is really what 28nm should have been from the outset, anyone who bought in March and didn't actually need a new GPU is undoubtedly feeling the burn of all the recent price drops, but hey, at least its not as bad as Facebook's IPO?
And no, GTX 260/280 weren't a problem for me because the difference is with those parts, the performance justified the premium relative to the last generation of cards (8800GT/GTX). This generation clearly does not adhere to those same expectations, which again, is a view I'm pretty sure you were onboard with months ago. What Nvidia didn't expect was for AMD to lowball them so much on a certain performance level, something AMD has clearly worked to remedy with each successive generation with their increases in asking prices for their 1st and 2nd tier single-GPU SKUs.