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*** Official GTX660TI review thread***

I've just read the reviews on Toms hardware and at the price point Nvidia has set it at it disappoints. If they priced at £200 that would really set the cat amongst the pigeons.
 
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,review-32505-17.html

Not really impressed considering its £20 / £30 more expensive than my card and on average a bit slower.

7970 = 141.3%
GTX 670= 126.5%
7950= 120.5%
7870= 110.7%
GTX 660ti = 107.4%
GTX 580 = 100%

A pretty pragmatic conclusion from Tom's

According to the settings we chose on a per-game basis, picked to maximize visual quality at playable frame rates, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is close to, if not slightly slower than a Radeon HD 7870. We already know this runs counter to Nvidia's expectations, which put the new card between AMD's Radeon HD 7870 and 7950. However, after comparing lab results, the outcome of our testing appears tied to the way we picked settings for each game, likely taxing the 660 Ti's memory bandwidth more than less-demanding options would.

Perhaps our settings favour the Radeon cards. Perhaps theirs favour the GeForce-based boards. And maybe the most real-world outcome lies somewhere in between. But, I believe the truth is that GeForce GTX 660 Ti performs within 5%, plus or minus, of the Radeon HD 7870.
Click to expand...

Both Nvidia and AMD will say "use these settings" after a lot of playing about to see what settings will show there own card in the best light, for me its always better to use setting that will get good FPS at the best possible eye candy setting (ignoring the companies wishes), just like any user would, and Tom's have.

The slow 192Bit Memory bus on the GTX 660TI seems to be a cause for bottle necking as it has the same GPU as the GTX 670, it also only has 24 Rop's vs 32 on mine, not good! And who knows what that will do for the speed of GFX fill as your going along, the last thing i want to see is the details being filled in as you go.

IMHO they would have been better off using a GPU with less cores and a 256Bit Memory bus, just like every other GPU in the mid to high range.
 
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humbug said:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,review-32505-17.html

Not really impressed considering its £20 / £30 more expensive than my card and on average a bit slower.

7970 = 141.3%
GTX 670= 126.5%
7950= 120.5%
7870= 110.7%
GTX 660ti = 107.4%
GTX 580 = 100%

/snip
Click to expand...

Just thought I would add that the above uses the normal HD7950 not the HD7950 with the new bios update which Toms only used in their overclocking section, that actually beats a stock 670.

Of course the argument can be made that the 7950B is technically a factory overclocked card, but regardless its the same price as a 7950 so takes its place in AMD's lineup (original 7950's can also be converted to 7950B's as its a bios update not physical)
 
@ ubersonic

Yes, your right on all counts. But i do think Tom's did right in not including the 7950 Ghz edition as the standard 7950 is still on the market with the Ghz edition not out yet.

On a bigger note to that, its never made any sense to me why AMD should release there top end cards with such a low clock.

The 7950 has 35% more shaders than my 7870 and yet with a 3'rd party overclock (Gigabyte @ 1100Mhz) its just as fast, and with the clocks i have it set at it destroys a reference stock 7950.

But if you turn the clocks up to what is a reasonable and perfectly easy level the 7950 / 7970 are absolute monsters leaving everything else for dead.
 
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ubersonic said:
Just thought I would add that the above uses the normal HD7950 not the HD7950 with the new bios update which Toms only used in their overclocking section, that actually beats a stock 670.

Of course the argument can be made that the 7950B is technically a factory overclocked card, but regardless its the same price as a 7950 so takes its place in AMD's lineup (original 7950's can also be converted to 7950B's as its a bios update not physical)
Click to expand...

Well I don't think that the 7950b beats a 670 on average. Perhaps a 7950 at around 1000mhz may be around equal to a 670, but I seriously doubt at 925mhz it would beat a 670.
 
humbug said:
@ ubersonic

Yes, your right on all counts. But i do think Tom's did right in not including the 7950 Ghz edition as the standard 7950 is still on the market with the Ghz edition not out yet.
Click to expand...

Yeah I understand where your coming from, but technically its been on the market for a few days now as its just a software update to the card and the new firmware has been available to download for current owners since Tuesday (for reference boards anyway, people with 2rd party revised boards have to wait for their manufacturer to release the firmware update for their specific card ofc).
 
psychodil said:
Well I don't think that the 7950b beats a 670 on average. Perhaps a 7950 at around 1000mhz may be around equal to a 670, but I seriously doubt at 925mhz it would beat a 670.
Click to expand...

You're right. I think when they're both overclocked (say average quality silicon) the 670 is around 5-10% faster.

Not much in it though and the 7950 is far, far cheaper.
 
Do these 20-30 quid graphics card price differentials really make any difference to people who arent watching every penny. I know i cared in my very early twenties, but these days you weigh up the cost of winding yourself up trying to find a way to eek out 4fps more in a game for the sake of a round of drinks.

I bought a 660ti Power Edition at the weekend, after 10 years off from buying decent graphics cards (the ones in between, a 8800gt and a Radeon 5570 came with the pcs) and i'm over the moon with it. Just whack everything up to full on MW3 @ 1900x1200 and it screams along. Very pleased with it.
 
nucastle said:
Do these 20-30 quid graphics card price differentials really make any difference to people who arent watching every penny. I know i cared in my very early twenties, but these days you weigh up the cost of winding yourself up trying to find a way to eek out 4fps more in a game for the sake of a round of drinks.

I bought a 660ti Power Edition at the weekend, after 10 years off from buying decent graphics cards (the ones in between, a 8800gt and a Radeon 5570 came with the pcs) and i'm over the moon with it. Just whack everything up to full on MW3 @ 1900x1200 and it screams along. Very pleased with it.
Click to expand...

The GTX670 is a faster card overall and the increased memory bandwidth will make a difference in the long run,and the pre-overclocked GTX660TI cards are only £20 to £40 cheaper anyway. Moreover,the reduction in ROPs over the GTX670 does not help. TBH,for around £20 to £40 or roughly 10% to 15% more I would get a GTX670,as it is less likely to have problems with the more demanding DX11 games coming out over the next 2 years - some of these will push cards more than the current games.

If the card was closer to £200 it would not matter,but it isn't and is around £250.

The following chart is from the OP and compiled from over 10 reviews.

GTX660TIrelativeperformance.png


The 8800GT 256MB did well at the time too relative to the 512MB version and yet the performance of the former collapsed relative the the latter version over time. The highly overclocked GTX560TI cards were around £40 cheaper than GTX570 cards and yet the latter has done much better in the long run. The same could be said of the GTX460 768MB and GTX460 1GB.

Moreover,many people also overclock their cards too(being an overclocking friendly forum),so that is why the HD7950 is being recommended too,if you cannot stretch to a GTX670.
 
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Depends on what the performance gains actually are in. Benchmarks? Multi-Monitor setups?

Once you get past maxing out the average 24-27 inch monitor resolution, the considerations for supporting ever more powerful graphics cards end up pushing total overall costs up surely. I've been out of the game for a long time admittedly, but do PSU requirements and CPU's good enough to extract performance all end up going up linearly?
 
nucastle said:
Depends on what the performance gains actually are in. Benchmarks? Multi-Monitor setups?

Once you get past maxing out the average 24-27 inch monitor resolution, the considerations for supporting ever more powerful graphics cards end up pushing total overall costs up surely. I've been out of the game for a long time admittedly, but do PSU requirements and CPU's good enough to extract performance all end up going up linearly?
Click to expand...

The GTX660TI is bandwidth limited design(even at single monitor resolutions) and the other cards I mentioned suffered from bandwidth and RAM limitations compared to the slightly pricer versions. They were fine at the time of release,but the limitations were more evident over as newer games were released and if you looked at the overall average performance of the card,even now the GTX670 is still faster overall at 1920X1080.

Moreover,any games which push memory bandwidth will be starved on the GTX660TI and not the GTX670. For the sake of £20 to £40,it is simply not worth it,especially with what is being released in the next 2 years.

If this was a £200 card with OC versions around £220,then it would be significantly cheaper than a GTX670(around 40% when the cheapest cards are compared),but it isn't. The GTX460 and GTX560TI were under £200 at launch for the cheapest cards BTW.

The GTX660TI does not consume much less power than a GTX670 and in many reviews the GTX660TI consumes around the same. On top of this any decent 500W to 550W PSU should be fine with cards such as the GTX670,or HD7950. Even a GTX570 which can be had for under £200 consumes more power than a GTX670 or HD7950 and will run fine on such PSUs.

When it comes to the CPU any higher TDP SB or IB Core i5 will be fine. A Core i3 will probably be fine upto GTX570 level from what I gather.
 
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