The GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA, Zotac, and Gigabyte
by Ryan Smith on August 16, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMeet The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC
Our final GTX 660 Ti of the day is Gigabyte’s entry, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC. Unlike the other cards in our review today this is not a semi-custom card but rather a fully-custom card, which brings with it some interesting performance ramifications.
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti Partner Card Specification Comparison | ||||||
| GeForce GTX 660 Ti(Ref) | EVGA GTX 660 Ti Superclocked | Zotac GTX 660 Ti AMP! | Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti OC | |||
| Base Clock | 915MHz | 980MHz | 1033MHz | 1033MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 980MHz | 1059MHz | 1111MHz | 1111MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 6008MHz | 6008MHz | 6608MHz | 6008MHz | ||
| Frame Buffer | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | ||
| TDP | 150W | 150W | 150W | ~170W | ||
| Width | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | ||
| Length | N/A | 9.5" | 7.5" | 10,5" | ||
| Warranty | N/A | 3 Year | 3 Year + Life | 3 Year | ||
| Price Point | $299 | $309 | $329 | $319 | ||
The big difference between a semi-custom and fully-custom card is of course the PCB; fully-custom cards pair a custom cooler with a custom PCB instead of a reference PCB. Partners can go in a few different directions with custom PCBs, using them to reduce the BoM, reduce the size of the card, or even to increase the capabilities of a product. For their GTX 660 Ti OC, Gigabyte has gone in the latter direction, using a custom PCB to improve the card.
On the surface the specs of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC are relatively close to our other cards, primarily the Zotac. Like Zotac Gigabyte is pushing the base clock to 1033MHz and the boost clock to 1111MHz, representing a sizable 118MHz (13%) base overclock and a 131MHz (13%) boost overclock respectively. Unlike the Zotac however there is no memory overclocking taking place, with Gigabyte shipping the card at the standard 6GHz.
What sets Gigabyte apart here in the specs is that they’ve equipped their custom PCB with better VRM circuitry, which means NVIDIA is allowing them to increase their power target from the GTX 660 Ti standard of 134W to an estimated 141W. This may not sound like much (especially since we’re working with an estimate on the Gigabyte board), but as we’ve seen time and time again GK104 is power-limited in most scenarios. A good GPU can boost to higher bins than there is power available to allow it, which means increasing the power target in a roundabout way increases performance. We’ll see how this works in detail in our benchmarks, but for now it’s good enough to say that even with the same GPU overclock as Zotac the Gigabyte card is usually clocking higher.
Moving on, Gigabyte’s custom PCB measures 8.4” long, and in terms of design it doesn’t bear a great resemblance to either the reference GTX 680 PCB nor the reference GTX 670 PCB; as near as we can tell it’s completely custom. In terms of design it’s nothing fancy – though like the reference GTX 670 the VRMs are located in the front – and as we’ve said before the real significance is the higher power target it allows. Otherwise the memory layout is the same as the reference GTX 660 Ti with 6 chips on the front and 2 on the back. Due to its length we’d normally insist on there being some kind of stiffener for an open air card, but since Gigabyte has put the GPU back far enough, the heatsink mounting alone provides enough rigidity to the card.
Sitting on top of Gigabyte’s PCB is a dual fan version of Gigabyte’s new Windforce cooler. The Windforce 2X cooler on their GTX 660 Ti is a bit of an abnormal dual fan cooler, with a relatively sparse aluminum heatsink attached to unusually large 100mm fans. This makes the card quite large and more fan than heatsink in the process, which is not something we’ve seen before.
The heatsink itself is divided up into three segments over the length of the card, with a pair of copper heatpipes connecting them. The bulk of the heatsink is over the GPU, while a smaller portion is at the rear and an even smaller portion is at the front, which is also attached to the VRMs. The frame holding the 100mm fans is then attached at the top, anchored at either end of the heatsink. Altogether this cooling contraption is both longer and taller than the PCB itself, making the final length of the card nearly 10” long.
Finishing up the card we find the usual collection of ports and connections. This means 2 PCIe power sockets and 2 SLI connectors on the top, and 1 DL-DVI-D port, 1 DL-DVI-I port, 1 full size HDMI 1.4 port, and 1 full size DisplayPort 1.2 on the front. Meanwhile toolless case users will be happy to see that the heatsink is well clear of the bracket, so toolless clips are more or less guaranteed to work here.
Rounding out the package is the usual collection of power adapters and a quick start guide. While it’s not included in the box or listed on the box, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC works with Gigabyte’s OC Guru II overclocking software, which is available on Gigabyte’s website. Gigabyte has had OC Guru for a number of years now, and with this being the first time we’ve seen OC Guru II we can say it’s greatly improved from the functional and aesthetic mess that defined the previous versions.
While it won’t be winning any gold medals, in our testing OC Guru II gets the job done. Gigabyte offers all of the usual tweaking controls (including the necessary power target control), along with card monitoring/graphing and an OSD. It’s only real sin is that Gigabyte hasn’t implemented sliders on their controls, meaning that you’ll need to press and hold down buttons in order to dial in a setting. This is less than ideal, especially when you’re trying to crank up the 6000MHz memory clock by an appreciable amount.
Wrapping things up, the Gigebyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC comes with Gigabyte’s standard 3 year warranty. Gigabyte will be releasing it at an MSRP of $319, $20 over the price of a reference-clocked GTX 660 Ti and $10 less than the most expensive card in our roundup today.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
313 Comments
View All Comments
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
There are 8 OC 660Ti's on newegg right now and only 3 released at stock.By chance alone the reviewers will be reviewing an OC'ed 660Ti, as was pointed out in the article you did not read, there is NO "standard design" pushed by nVidia so the partners have a free reign to come out of the gate with OVERCLOCKS a rocking.
They have done so.
So now, OC is the standard and overwhelming production with the 660Ti
Get use to it.
Unfortunately AMD has been a severely restrictive control freak nazi master dom smacking down and hurting their partners and has not allowed freedom. Then, in the usual control monster hold the gamers back fashion, they finally okayed their GE crap to their broken and hurting partners so they could charge a lot more.
Evil, greedy, tyranny control, amd
Galidou - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
4 out of 18 cards for AMD are reference coolers on newegg, nothing different on the other side... 11 out of 18 are overclocked and the other 3 non-reference coolers that are not overclocked are begging to be boosted.So if OC is the standard, why not try to push it farther, factory overclocking versus aftermarket overclocking isn't much different if the video cards take it so easily. :)
''severely restrictive control freak nazi master dom smacking down and hurting'' even had to use the word Nazi... comon, be less of a fanboy, it's just childish, that was ridiculous. I'm not diminishing any of both companies, if you really want AMD to die, we'll all cry for no more competition will be alive. We'll be back to the days of geforce 2 gts at 800$. Praise the war and be a little more respectful please.
TheJian - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
I don't want AMD to die, but I wouldn't mind seeing them bought as they're already well on their way to death without our help. I can't justify buying cpu's that completely suck now (granted our crappy court system took forever to pay AMD for Intel's crap), and won't do it just to help them out.If the courts had seen fit to pay them what they truly got screwed out of (I'm reminded of buying white box ASUS boards because Asus was afraid to even put their name on the box!) when they were on top for 3 years at least, we wouldn't be having this discussion. They should have been given 15-20 billion from the ill-gotten 60+ billion earned from that time forward (as I'm sure market share would have gone up with more money to produce more stuff, keeping the fabs etc). It's not my wallets job to help now. They need to claim bankruptcy and get bought. Management has blown their ability to compete due to the financial burdens now facing them.
http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financi...
Take a look at the last 10 years. Overall a loss of 6 billion or so. The previous 10 looks no better. In fact I think if you go back to inception, they haven't made a buck overall. That's not good. Shares outstanding in those last 10 years...DOUBLED. DILUTED! 344mil to 698 mil. You can't keep selling shares to cover old debts forever. Eventually nobody will loan you money and you can't operate at that point.
The stock has been cut in half in the last 5 months. Intel will continue to crush them as they can't invest 4Bil like Intel is doing now over the next few years to stay ahead. You just can't win without R&D.
OC is the standard but you're talking about doing it on your own, vs sanctioned by the manufacturer and coming as default like that on almost every 660 TI out there (which is what he pointed out), then you go off about fans? He's talking about SPEEDS already OC'd on the cards by default regardless of the fan on it. The makers of the card (msi, xfx, gigabyte etc) are SELLING THEM OC'd. You don't have to do anything buy buy it and stick it in. It's already overclocked, and overclocking itself to the highest clock it can without damage (that's built into the 600 series, NV is a step ahead here). That changes on a per gpu basis too...Very nice.
Attack the man's data (if you can) not the nazi crap. Comparing the actions of one company to the actions of a well known person or group's actions (while I'd have chosen something other than nazi's) when said company is acting like them is valid. It's not disrespectful. His point wasn't they are killing Jews by the millions (or anyone else). His point was devs of cards are a bit peeved. I.E. only 2 have announced 7950 BOOST editions that I'm aware of. First, because they are already selling 900mhz+ versions that AMD doesn't want to see in the market (which is why I said Ryan should have benched one of his cards at this speed, what fool would buy REF or boost @850 when you can get a free 50-100mhz overclocked by the vid card makers already?), and second they don't care about want AMD wants after being shackled and wanting free reign, like you see on 660 TI's...all kinds of speeds from the launch, with rarely a REF CLOCKed card in sight! Do you get it now? It's not about the fan, it's about the speed the maker is willing to BACK out of the box by default and still warranty it without complaining about what you did to void their warranty. Cerise isn't putting AMD out of business, AMD is.
Galidou - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - link
I was speaking to CeriseCogburn, he sees the company as the prime evil, just read ny of his post and you will see the hate, the knifes in his eyes. I'd be AMD and I'd have him arrested by the police, he's a madman and almsot goes up to throw menaces at the company, Using terms like greed, Nazis and so much more that I'll leave it up to you to read him from page 1 to 10 on this forum. I'd be an AMD employee reading this and I'd be like ''WTF, I'm just a human being working my best to feed my family, I'm not working for the devil...''''severely restrictive control freak nazi master dom smacking ''
''Evil, greedy, tyranny control, amd''
used just in the text above mine, how are those words any useful when defending an opinion, that's repression, lack of respect and total madness..... We're not speaking of an army that tries to take control of the world by domination coming up in your home and killing your children FFS.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Keep lying and crying crybaby.Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
I'd like to lie, but the posts have not been deleted and everyone can read them.Galidou - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
I don't know if you realised but they way you display your arguments, accuse so easily, attack and confront even the owners of the cards, that uses it right now and telling them everything crashes and is unplayable while they are using the cards with no problem, it discredit any or your credibility.You alone are making it worse, continue, I have no problem with that, the more you add things like your last post, the worse it is. I won't, I'm sorry for the way things are turning, I'm not going down to your level because I'm just a simple enthusiast.
And yet posting only to say ''Keep lying and crying crybaby'' is just another proof that SOMETIMES, your really just answering so you can have the last words. That was the most useless post I've ever seen....
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
Oh you're such a fool - it's nine months AFTER amd released their crap clocked cards with the LOCK on their core speed.dude, get a freaking clue
"oh dey released it juzz azz much wit oc,....i'm so stpooopid and such a liar.."
How about manning up : " I was wrong in front of my daughter every time, and I'm mad about that. She's going to be just as foolish as me (I hope)".
No nevermind, you KNOW IT.
ionis - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
"NVIDIA did see a lot of success last year with the GTX 560 driving the retirement of the 8800GT/9800GT"Just curious, where do you get these stats? I still haven't found a reason to upgrade from the 8800GT. It plays everything I throw at it great, on high, at 1680x1050.
Sufo - Thursday, August 16, 2012 - link
Interesting, as the 8800 GTX can barely crack 30fps in BF3 at that res on low. I guess they were talking about people who play mainly modern games.