After a month of grueling benchmarking and putting the Palit GeForce GTX 660Ti under the stressful environment of the latest games, here’s what PTB has to say about NVIDIA’s latest weapon of choice for gamers.
After launching the flagship graphics card, GTX 680, five months ago, NVIDIA released the latest Kepler-based GPU dubbed the GeForce GTX660 Ti. It is based on the GK104 architecture which is used in the GTX 690/680/670 lines and the GTX 660Ti even packs the same number of CUDA cores as the 670 for maximum eye candy for your”¦ err eyes.
Our review won’t consist of synthetic benchmarks as it really won’t be that much significant for me. I don’t buy GPUs just to see how high it can go on 3DMark or whatever synthetic benchmarking tool you use. I buy GPUs so I can play the latest games on the highest setting without turning my PC into a kinetoscope.
So okay, locked and loaded, here’s a list of the games I tried the Palit GTX 660 Ti with.
Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, and TES : Skyrim.
Let’s get to what’s new and cutting-edge about the GTX 660 Ti. Games are looking better and better especially with the advent of the latest in DirectX offering, DirectX 11. And who would forget NVIDIA’s PhysX engine, which gives games more life albeit at the cost of performance. People sometimes use a dedicated GPU just for PhysX, but with the 660 Ti, it runs PhysX without hiccupping your system.
Another game changer is TXAA. Sorry, I don’t have The Secret World to test TXAA as it’s the first game to support it. Anyway, TXAA is a new film-style anti-aliasing technique to reduce flickering and improve edges in moving images.
NVIDIA’s latest architecture focuses on performance/watt to make sure that you get the best out of your gaming experience without setting aside extra funds for your Meralco bill. Under heavy stress, the GTX 660 Ti can draw up to 165W of power, consider that this GPU is powerful, that’s not much. Don’t worry about the GPU heating up as with Palit’s JetStream cooler design with 2 fans and a heatsink to keep you on gaming for longer periods of time even during the summer.
The way I tested this GPU is put everything into maximum detail setting just to see how far this baby can go. If the option is available, I put DX10 or DX11 mode and/or PhysX on.
Here’s my system configuration for the tests:
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 @ 4.0ghz
MOBO: MSI 770-C45 (Disclaimer: This board doesn’t support PCI-e 3.0, so I may not be maximizing the benefits of this card)
PSU: HEC Cougar 700W
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1600
Specifications comparison
Now, I’m comparing the GTX 660 Ti to one of its competitors in its price range and a one-generation lower Nvidia GTX video card. This is to help existing users if they should upgrade or it might be worth the while to wait for the 7xx series of Nvidia cards.
GTX 660Ti | Radeon 7870 | GTX 570 | |
---|---|---|---|
Processor cores | 1344 Cores | 1280 Cores | 480 Cores |
Memory | 2048 MB | 2048 MB | 1280 MB |
Memory Interface | 192-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit |
DRAM Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
Base clock | 1006MHz | 1000 MHz | 1464 MHz |
Memory Clock | 6008MHz | 4800MHz | 3800 Mhz |
Memory Bandwidth | 146.6 GB/sec | 153.6 GB/sec | 152.0 GB/sec |
Power Consumption | 160W | 130W | 219W |
In the current market, these 3 cards’ price gap isn’t that much. Each card has their own pros and cons. Obviously, if you’re a big fan of AMD, you’ll know why you would choose the 7870, but if you’re a hardcore NVIDIA fan on a budget, surely, you would choose between the 570 and the 660Ti as the 570 is in a much higher tier albeit being a generation older. You can see the difference between the power consumption between the 3, knowing AMD, they tend to consume little power. And between the two architectures, as companies move into a more environment-friendly product line, they make the newer ones draw less power but still packs a mean punch.
Tip: If you’re planning on upgrading your GPU or your system rather, with the pace of technology today, it’s more pocket-friendly to buy tech components in the mid-range a quarter or two upon their release AND upgrade every 2 generations or so. Going mid-range really helps as you won’t be spending too much cash on a top-of-the-line product that would be rebranded after 2 generations and you won’t be sacrificing performance too.
Here’s a complete spec sheet of the Palit GeForce GTX 660Ti JetStream edition:
CUDA Cores | 1344 |
Texture Units | 112 |
ROP Units | 24 |
Base Clock | 1006 MHz |
Boost Clock | 1084 MHz |
Memory Clock | 3054 MHz |
Total Video Memory | 2048MB GDDR5 |
Memory Interface | 192-bit |
Total Memory Bandwidth | 146.6 GB/s |
Texture Filtering Rate | 112.7 Billion/sec |
Fabrication Process | 28 nm |
Transistor Count | 3.54 Billion |
Connectors | 2x Dual-link DVI; 1x HDMI; 1x DisplayPort |
Form Factor | 2.5 slot |
Power Connectors | 2 x 6-pin (Important to check if your PSU have 2 of these.) |
Recommended PSU | 450W |
TDP | 160W |
Thermal Threshold | 98 C |
Performance
Now here’s the beefy part. I tested the Palit NVIDIA GTX660 Ti in a number of games. Note that everything here is based on the highest settings available to the game. It is to gauge how the card handles stressful gaming graphics.
Here are some screenshots from Batman: Arkham City DX10 and DX11. Note that Arkham City’s DX11 seems to be buggy and even though I have updated to the latest patch, it did boost the FPS just a little bit.
Skyrim looks amazingly beautiful on this card. This is Ultra settings in DX10.
- Min 59 FPS
- Max 62 FPS
- Avg 60.322 FPS
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations plays smoothly but there are some stuttering on Max Settings DX10.
- Min 46 FPS
- Max 48 FPS
- Avg 47.104 FPS
The colors are very vibrant on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the game is buttery smooth even on the highest settings on DX11.
- Min 30 FPS
- Max 64 FPS
- Avg 57.971 FPS
The GTX 660 Ti didn’t have any problems with High Moon’s latest game, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.
- Min 58 FPS
- Max 62 FPS
- Avg 59.952 FPS
I tried gaming for hours and I’m a non-airconditioned room and the Palit GTX 660 Ti topped at 69 Celsius. Now that’s cool considering I’ve been playing graphic intensive games for hours. Thanks to Palit’s Jetstream technology, you don’t have to worry about overheating the GTX 660 Ti and will allow you to play longer hours.
In closing, I would definitely recommend this card to those who are looking for building a new gaming desktop computer and wants a bang-for-the-buck video card that can play the latest game and in making your gaming rig future proof.
The Palit GeForce GTX 660Ti retails for about Php14,200.