EVGA GTX 660 Ti Review: Kepler Rendered Affordable - mickelsonwaaft1990

At a Glance

Expert's Paygrad

Pros

Makes desktop Kepler graphics more affordable
Compact and power-efficient

Cons

GPU reckon performance lower than the competition

Our Verdict

The new GTX 660, as EVGA envisions it, represents a attractive upgrade for users of older nontextual matter cards.

Nvidia has been getting a wad of mileage out of the Kepler screen background GPU, using the chip shot in the GTX 670 and GTX 680 graphics card game, and delivery it back once once more in the new GTX 660 Ti. Although the GTX 670 had one functional block disabled, the GTX 660 Ti cuts just a single key feature: one of the retentivity controller blocks. This design change reduces the data breadth to memory to 192 bits wide, in contrast to the 256-bit pathways available on the GTX 670 and GTX 680. Since the ROP (raster operations) unit is part of that block, the ROP units now number 24 instead of 32. The clock rate is a little let down arsenic well.

Speeds and Feeds

Let's take a quick deal how the GTX 660 Ti differs from its pricier cousins. Short letter that the listed clock frequencies are for eVGA's GTX 660 Ti SC model, which is clocked slightly higher than Nvidia's reference card. Other shipping retail boards may dissent in clock frequencies, depending on the figure of the board and what from each one company wants to support. The target price for the base of operations GTX 660 Ti is $299; the superclocked eVGA model we tested is priced at $310 (prices are as of August 16, 2012).

Feature	eVGA GTX 660 Ti SC	GTX 670	GTX 680
Graphics cores	1344	1344	1536
Texture units	112	112	128
ROPs	24	32	32
Base clock frequency	980MHz	915MHz	1006MHz
Boost clock frequency	1059MHz	980MHz	1058MHz
Memory (frequency)	2GB (1502MHz)	2GB GDDR5 (1502 MHz)	2GB GDDR5 (1502 MHz)
Memory interface	192-scra	256-bit	256-bit
Transistor count	3.5 billion	3.5 zillion	3.5 billion
Display connectors	2 x Dual Link DVI, 2 x HDMI 1.4a (Fast), 2 x DisplayPort 1.2	2 x Twofold Join DVI, 2 x HDMI 1.4a (Fast), 2 x DisplayPort 1.2	2 x Double Radio link DVI, 2 x HDMI 1.4a (Latched), 2 x DisplayPort 1.2
Power connectors	2 x 6-pin PCIe	2 x 6-fall PCIe	2 x 6-pin PCIe
Thermal design power (TDP)	150W	170W	195W

Those are the inferior specs in a nutshell. It's time to sound out how our test board performed.

Performance

We collected performance information away victimization FutureMark's 3DMark 2011 and quaternion DirectX 11 games: Crysis 2, Dirt Face-of, Metro 2033, and Batman: Arkham Metropolis. We ran the game tests at 1920-by-1200-pixel declaration with 4x multisampling antialiasing enabled. In addition, we measured system baron, under idle and load, using a Watts Up Pro big businessman meter. The system we ill-used for testing carried a Core i7-3960X CPU running at 3.3GHz, as well as 12GB of DDR3 memory running at 1600MHz. The major power issue, motherboard, and past hardware remained constant during the intact run; so too did the operating system, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

I compared the eVGA GTX 660 Ti SC's carrying into action with that of AMD's similarly priced Radeon HD 7870 GHz Version, in the form of the Asus HD 7870 DirectCU II. I didn't have got time to rerun all the benchmarks with the experient GTX 560 Ti, but initial testing indicates that the 660 Ti is definitely a step astir in performance.

The eVGA tease easily won the 3DMark 2011 synthetic test. Although 3DMark 2011 isn't equal to actual games, information technology does examination most DirectX 11 features.

In Batman: Arkham Urban center, the GTX 660 Ti won out over the Radeon by more or less 10 percent, which is a pretty substantive conflict.

In Crysis 2, the difference in performance between the eVGA and Asus card game was little than in Arkham Urban center, but still worth noting.

In the Metro 2033 try, the roles reversed slightly, with the GTX 660 Ti running just a bit slower than the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Version.

What gives? In this game the Asus Radeon card pulled extinct a big win over the GTX 660 Ti. However, in this case the difference is not purely attributable to a artwork publish. Grunge Encounter uses Microsoft's DirectCompute interface to perform some serious mobile detail calculations for two Francis Scott Key features: global illumination and advanced lighting. The AMD GPU is substantially better at pure computation than the Nvidia chip is, which gives the AMD production an bound. Government note that most games have yet to make heavy use of the GPU in general compute tasks, so it's unlikely you'll see big differences, and the GTX 660 Ti tends to perform better in games that father't make grievous use of GPU compute.

Information technology's impressive how idle power usage has improved along all the current-generation cards. We sawing machine little working difference of opinion in business leader usage betwixt these two card game.

Final Thoughts

Priced at $310, the eVGA GTX 660 Ti Security Council is aimed at gamers who require to get very good performance without spending $400 or more for a high-end card. Such users tend to grasp to their card game for two or three years, so they'rhenium in all probability upgrading from an older GTX 260 card. In those cases, the GTX 660 Ti offers reasonably substantial performance gains, as well as the ability to run DirectX 11 titles.

The card is surprisingly compact for its performance, and should fit in most midsize-tower cases—even those absent the depth to handle more-unrefined card game. Power supply requirements should be mild, also: A good 500W PSU should bash the trick.

The eVGA GTX 660 Ti is efficient and compact, and it offers very good performance at its price. If you're a serious PC gamer with a controlled budget, and if you take up been making coif with a two-year-old card, IT's time to think seriously about upgrading.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/460705/evga_gtx_660_ti_review_kepler_rendered_affordable.html

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