Multiple Contenders – EVGA SC
We take overclocked 660 Ti card from EVGA, Galaxy, MSI and Zotac and put them head to head.
One of the most anticipated graphics card releases of the year occurred this month in the form of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti from NVIDIA, and as you would expect we were there on the day one with an in-depth review of the card at reference speeds.
The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is based on GK104, and what you might find interesting is that it is nearly identical to the specifications of the GTX 670. Both utilize 7 SMX units for a total of 1344 stream processors – or CUDA cores – and both run at a reference clock speed of 915 MHz base and 980 MHz Boost. Both include 112 texture units though the GeForce GTX 660 Ti does see a drop in ROP count from 32 to 24. Also, L2 cache drops from 512KB to 384KB along with a memory bus width drop from 256-bit to 192-bit.
We already spent quite a lot of time talking about the GTX 660 Ti compared to the other NVIDIA and AMD GPUs in the market in our review (linked above) as well as on our most recent episode of the PC Perspective Podcast. Today's story is all about the retail cards we received from various vendors including EVGA, Galaxy, MSI and Zotac. We are going to show you each card's design, the higher clocked settings that were implemented, performance differences between them and finally the overclocking comparisons of all four.
EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Superclocked
Our first retail GeForce GTX 660 Ti card (in alphabetical order of course) is the EVGA Superclocked variant – a design that EVGA fans will no doubt be very familiar with.
The card includes the standard set of features and 2GB of frame buffer, and uses as close to a "reference" cooler as any of the cards in our roundup today.
EVGA's card has a unique texture on the carbon fiber styled front panel that is "tacky" without being sticky. It looks very nice though in our office it did gather some dust as it was moved around for testing and photos.
EVGA's model uses the half-length PCB that we first saw introduced on the GTX 670 reference cards. Because this GPU shares so much DNA with the GTX 670, it makes sense that these same designs would be common.
The standard connection configuration is at work here with two dual-link DVI ports and full-size HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. I really do think this is the best hassle-free configuration I have seen on a graphics card to date.
While all four of these graphics cards had the same kind of standard pack-ins – like DVI to VGA adapter, power adapters, etc – EVGA included a pretty neat set of stickers. While I usually just pass this stuff straight to the garbage can, I think much of the community relates to the pride associated with building your own rig and these stickers expound on that.
The EVGA Superclocked 660 Ti runs at a 980 MHz base clock with a 1059 MHz Boost clock. While that is higher than the reference speeds of 915 MHz base and 985 MHz boost, it is the lowest of all the "out of the box" clocks for the four cards we are testing here.
Is there any reason to think
Is there any reason to think that the stock version of these cards couldn’t overclock to the level of the OC cards?
For example, the regular ZOTAC card looks to have the same cooler and configuration otherwise.
No, not really, they likely
No, not really, they likely could. Just a matter of what you want out of the box really. The one thing you should watch for is the cooler and power configuration.
Ryan could you tell us what
Ryan could you tell us what the idle temps were for these cards? Just to see comparison/jump to load temps.
Sure, I’ll try to get these
Sure, I'll try to get these for you.
Correct me if I’m wrong Ryan,
Correct me if I’m wrong Ryan, but don’t these benchmarks basically show that the 660 ti is somewhat bottle necked by the memory bandwidth?
Correct. And we thought as
Correct. And we thought as much with the drop to a 192-bit memory bus width.
Honestly knowing the memory
Honestly knowing the memory situation, I recommend the card with the highest quality memory that can be overclocked because that alone is the performance boost for this card….I swear I read a review of a 660ti with some special memory chips…I dunno
Haven’t seen any like that
Haven't seen any like that yet…
Oh yea and Kudos to Zotec
Oh yea and Kudos to Zotec with the shorter card! Good for smaller cases.
I ordered the Zotac card
I ordered the Zotac card early (19th) since I have an SFF system and the Zotac card would be the only one to fit it.
I havent recieved it yet, but thank you for reassuring me that it was a good choise.
I have seen some sites claiming that zotac has a GTX 660 Ti Extreme edition in the making. While some say this is only intended for the chinese market, do you have any info on this and perhaps more specifics, like the size, of that card?
Haven’t heard anything yet,
Haven't heard anything yet, sorry.
Great read Ryan.
It is
Great read Ryan.
It is interesting to see just how much Kepler is affected by memory bandwidth and memory type.
Though we are seeing the downsides to GK104 being spread out as a entire product range, since GK104 was “meant” to be mid-range from the start. While the GTX 680/690/670/660 TI are great cards, they still dont target the “sweet spot” in my opinion, which is in the $150 – $250 ranges (aka cards like GTX 460/560 TI/ect).
#Side note: Do you need any more good reviewers/podcasters ;), lol.
I was able to overcloxk a
I was able to overcloxk a stock 660 ti to within 10% of the speed and bandwidth of a GTX 670, which is realy great imho. The temps were below 75*C.
Yup I got my O.C. to
Yup I got my O.C. to 1038/1103/1815 w/a temp at 78*C max.
The card is a EVGA 660ti.
The card is a EVGA 660ti. Overclock the memory and you can overcome the bandwidth restriction. Then the $299 card becomes a real value especialy w/the Borderlands game included.
Agreed, the $50-60 value of
Agreed, the $50-60 value of the game is pretty enticing considering it is just a current and big name title.
It will be interesting to
It will be interesting to hear MSI’s reason for the 114% Power cap. Could it be intentional to keep the Power Edition 660 Ti from overclocking as high as the more expensive Lightening edition?
The gpu temperatures dont are
The gpu temperatures dont are rigthes
i have a msi 660 ti oc and my gpu temperatues all all times higths thand yours .
got my msi 660ti to 1145/1223
got my msi 660ti to 1145/1223 and the memory to 1727mhz resulting in just about 7000mhz with afterburner,3dmark11 standard run P 8735 with those settings P 9237.
pretty good,but the memory bandwith just sucks,metro 2033 on high settings and 4xMsaa and 16xaf i cant get more than 30fps-35fps often dropping below that in intense scenes.
do yourself a favour and spend extra for a gtx 670 as you can run even very high settings and still preform better than a 660ti,and i play only on a 1920×1080 screen.a recent test revealed that even a AMD 7750 performs better with msaa and af settings put to max due to the memory bandwith.
I just purchased 2 EVGA GTX
I just purchased 2 EVGA GTX 660 TI SC+ 3GB and they are only hitting 60C under load. I’m not sure if something was changed in the 3GB version or if I just have a good card.