Gigabyte GTX 660Ti Overclock 2GB Graphics Card Review

We've seen a lot from NVIDIA over the last few months, especially with the launch of the mighty GTX 680 and its trimmed version the GTX 670. Whilst both of these have been eagerly awaited and have taken the markets by storm, there is one other chip in NVIDIA's arsenal that we have yet to see - the GTX 660 Ti. Before we get tucked into some Gigabyte VGA goodness, its worth while looking over the general specifications of the GTX 660Ti in its own right. Built around the GK104 Kepler GPU core, the 660Ti features 1344 Cuda cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 192-bit interface. Fresh from the NVIDIA factories, the stock boards will have a core clock speed of 915MHz, boosting to 980MHz and a TDP of 150W. As it stands, that is what NVIDIA are shipping out to their partners and any variations that you see on this card, whether it be higher clock speeds or a SKU with a 3GB memory capacity are solely down to each individual parter. During a recent product briefing, NVIDIA have stated that the GTX 660Ti is directly comparable to their earlier GTX 470 and GTX 260 with a ~1.8x performance upgrade over the 470 and a 3.3x increase over the much older 260. They have also claimed that the 660Ti is going to be able to directly take on the popular 7950 over from the red team AMD with the possibility that in some small cases it will be able to take on a 7970 as well. This latter statement is quite a bold one at that and one that we should aim to prove in this review and subsequent reviews from other partners. Getting back on track with the card we have to look at today, Gigabyte have taken the 660Ti and given it a little extra poke meaning that as the card is launched today (16th August 2012), they will have both stock and overclock versions available on the shelves to buy. The OC version that we have here to look at features the popular Windforce designed cooler with a twin fan design and a patent pending cooler design with "Triangle Cool" technology. As is becoming the standard with a number of manufacturers, we find a box design that very closely resembles that of other Gigabyte VGA products. As we've mentioned before, this holds one key advantage to different packaging each time in that it is easily recognised as a trusted brand. With that we find the Gigabyte VGA blue eye taking up the large majority of the box and a few highlights down the side to the right, amongst which we can see that this is an OC version of the 660 Ti. Over on the back of the box the story is like we have seen before with the big feature all about the Windforce cooler and the Ultra Durable components that are featured on the board. The remainder goes a little further into the cards main features below. Rather than a full on manual that we are used to finding, we find a simple quick start guide alongside two dual-molex to 6-pin PCIe power adaptors. Looking at the card in a little more depth, the first thing that stands out of course is the Windforce cooler, here with a twin 100m fan design. The two ultra quiet fans should be more than plentiful to keep the 1032MHz GPU core cool under the collar when under load. Looking at the cooler from the side, we can see that the heatsink is split into three parts, connected by two large copper heatpipes to move heat away from the core. The heatsink itself features a new patent pending "Triangle Cool" technology which has been developed to build the centre core of the heatsink like a stretched pyramid to direct air in such a manner that the amount of turbulence created by the fans is reduced and the efficiency of heat transfer away from the heatsink is increased at the same time. With a TDP of ~150W, we find two 6-pin PCIe power connectors on the top of the card. As we find on the vast majority of cards these days, there are two SLI connectors on the PCB to connect the card into multi-GPU configurations to get a huge boost in performance. On the back of the card, we find a standardised set of out put connectors, with two DVI, a single HDMI and a full sized DisplyPort. Before we get tucked into the results on how our card performs, its worth taking a look at the core and memory clock speeds. The 660Ti comes with a standard core clock speed of 925MHz (boosting to 980MHz) and as we was on the previous page, Gigabyte have given this card a little extra poke, raising the core clock speed to 1032MHz, boosting at 1111MHz and we also find that the memory clock has been left at the standard clock speed of 1502HMz (6008MHz effective). We'll have a look later on to see if there is more to be effectively had out of this card or whether Gigabyte had hit that sweet spot once again where any higher clocks result in no real performance gain. Those with a keen eye will note that we have mentioned a core clock speed on the 660Ti as 1032MHz whilst below, GPU-z shows the card to have a core clock of 1033MHz. There is a good reason for this, with the card only just being released, GPU-z has to be fully updated in order to recognise each particular GPU properly and so we expect a new release to follow shortly with better detection. Users of GPU-z 0.6.3 and below will also have to update as these versions are unable to detect the card at all. The test the performance of this card, we use the latest drivers direct from the manufacturer and run each test three times to obtain a fair average set of results. Test System: Asus Rampage IV Extreme Intel Core i7 3960X 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz Antec Kuhler 920 Corsair HX1050W Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Lian Li T60 3 x AOC E2795VH We would like to thank AOC, Asus, Corsair, Kingston, and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Games used: Aliens Vs Predator Batman: Arkham City Mafia II Metro 2033 Hardware used: Plug-in electricity usage monitor Sound level meter Software used: 3DMark 11 HWMonitor Unigine Heaven Benchmark Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. Starting off with 3DMark11, our first impressions of the 660Ti OC is purely wow. Ok we do have to account that this is an OC version, however Gigabyte's card has pushed past the stock performance levels of their own GTX670 at performance levels. This may be only just, but a pass is a pass none the less. Heaven 2.5 is regarded to be one of the most intensive Benchmarking utilities about at the moment along with the likes of 3DMark. It makes use of highly comprehensive tessellation technology, advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) and a highly defined light algorithm to produce ever changing light conditions amongst other items. Moving onto Heaven, Gigabyte's card inst so much hunting down their 670, but now AMD's reference 7970 is in the firing line with frame rates easily pushing past that of the red teams card even when in a multi screen setup. Aliens Vs Predator is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game that relies on DirectX 11 and high amounts of Tessellation in conjunction to give enhanced shadows and fantastic textures to the surrounds and characters within the game. In the real world games tests, things did tone but only a little, with the 660Ti OC giving slightly better performance levels over Sapphires 7950 OC Flex and on NVIDIA's side, surpassing the GTX580 SOC by 7fps at 1920 and 8fps at 1680. Batman: Arkham City was release late in 2011 as a sequal to Arkham Asylum. The game uses large scale mapping with heavy effects on lighting and the environment along with a lot of tessellation in a fast moving gaming scene. It utilises DirectX 11 for shadows, lighting, reflections and particles to give the best gaming experience possible. Firing up Batman, we came up with another surprise as the 660Ti OC gave frame rates that easily performed on par with the GTX 680 from a number of partners topping out at a whopping 130fps at 1680. We will note that we did feel this to be a bit high, however double and triple checking our settings and running the test the normal three times came up with similar results each time. Mafia II is an older game and therefore it does have older graphics engines, however this is is still a good all-round in game benchmark that combines the terrain and explosion rendering of Crysis with the dust and dirt particle rendering test of Dirt 2. It also takes into account the changing light conditions albeit not in quite the same detail as the others, but none-the-less still proves a cards capabilities on slightly older games. Like we saw when testing in Heaven, the 660Ti OC has the capability to take on AMD's 7970 and we also see that topping out at 82fps in 1920, the card is only a small step behind its bigger brother, the GTX 670. Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game based in the Russian metro system. Metro 2033 is very similar to the much loved game STALKER as it is developed by the same programmers. The game utilises DirectX 11 and relies heavily on tessellation features and is considered to be one of the most graphics intense games on the market. Going down into the tunnels of Metro 2033, the 660Ti again performs bang on level with Sapphire 7950 OC edition showing that this really is its direct rival on the shelves. Noise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it's necessary to show you the audio level of components. We use the same components throughout this test and use a sound level meter to record the audio level of the system with a passive graphics card installed. Once we have the level recorded with the passive card, we continue to change the graphics card for the one that we are testing. Due to us having the audio level recorded before installation, it gives us a guide to work with and shows that anything over our initial level is an audio gain. We've seen in the past that Gigabyte's Windforce cooler design is one of the best out there on the market, and here we find the card idling at a whisper quiet 48.2dBA and even at full load we could barely hear the fans spinning away with a level of 52.3dBA. To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment. With this being the first 660Ti we've looked at we can't see how it fairs to others on the market and at the same time being an OC version we do expect it to draw a little more power over the stock boards. This aside we find that the card does draw around the same amount of power as Gigabyte's own GTX 670 topping out with a total system draw of 308W. Measuring temperatures is all about being consitent, therefore we keep a steady eye on monitoring the ambient room temperature to make sure that it stays the same. While this is constantly being monitored, we measure the idle temperature of the card using HWMonitor over a 15 minute period. Once this has been recorded, we set FurMark into motion for 15 minutes and record the results again. Its all and well having a new cooler design as we have seen from many cards in the past, but the proof is always in the numbers. At idle levels, the new patent pending cooler design does very well to keep the core at 32 celcius, however things do start to get a little warm on the other end of the scale with high temps of 72 degrees recorded during testing. We've seen so far that the card has a lot of performance on tap, but as with all things hardware, there is always the scope for pushing things that little bit further. With this in mind we now endeavour to see how well each piece of hardware that we get in and we think is worthy of, gets our overclock treatment to take things right up to the next level. To test our overclocks, we decide to stick to what we know best for overclocking, MSI's Afterburner software, along with GPU-z, Furmark and 3DMark 11. Overclocking the 660Ti came up with some real surprises. When we overclock a card, in turn we see how far we can push the core clock speed on its own, then set that back to default and then take the memory up as far as it will go. By doing this we can get an idea of where the card will go when both are clocked up together. The first of our surprises can when we managed to achieve a core clock speed of 1240MHz with no voltage alterations and secondly we managed to achieve a memory clock speed of 1860MHz (7440MHz effective). We was not expecting the memory clocks to go this high in their own right but these are some of the highest memory clocks we have achieved in a while. Mixing the two together, we know the memory had to come down a few notches as there is no chance of it running at those speeds with the core clocks raised as well. After a lot of tinkering and tweaking to achieve not only a stable overclock but the best improvement, we settled with a core clock of 1137MHz and a memory clock of 1790MHz (7160MHz effective) and notably with no voltage alterations required or effective. Whilst this new speed was the best for the likes of 3DMark11, in all of our other real world gaming benchmarks, such as Heaven and Metro2033, there was little to do benefit in pushing things that little bit further, showing that again, Gigabyte have been able to hit the optimum point of performance squeezing out the best they can. Well, with out a doubt the 660Ti and more so Gigabyte's OC version that we've looked at here today has arrived in pure style, showing that you don't have to be the top dog in the lineup to be the best option to go for. The numbers speak for themselves and some of them are astonishing to say the least. NVIDIA claimed [as we mentioned in the intro] that the 660Ti was set to take on AMD's 7950 and even though the results that we have seen here surpass that in a number of tests, we do have to account that this is an OC version. This however doesn't means that the stock version won't, not at all, in fact we reckon it will still have the capability to take on the 7970 in a couple of areas as well. This card in particular was even able to take on Sapphires 7970 OC Dual-X Flex edition card in one test showing that its got the might to do so. Focussing more on the card, itself, the Windforce cooler has proved its way again running virtually silent throughout our testing with barely a whisper heard. The only pitfall it does have is on the grounds of load temperatures. Perhaps extending the cooler ever so slightly to have more surface area would aid in keeping the core slightly cooler, but that aside 72 degrees is not the worst we've seen in the past. Overclocking wise, we know that the card has a got the potential for the higher clocks, but like we saw with Gigabyte's mighty GTX 680 SOC, raising the clocks doesn't necessarily give better performance and Gigabyte have found the sweet spot where the clocks don't need to be any higher. One area where the 660Ti's predacessor, the 560Ti, took the market by storm, was its price point. With performance like we have here, one would expect a higher price point that would be knocking on the door of the higher tier cards. At a mere ~£251 inc VAT (€319) Gigabyte's GTX 660Ti OC is only a little more over the standard 660Ti's MSRP of £249 inc VAT, adding extra value to the deal. This price point also paved a way with the 560Ti and we saw a number of cases where enthusiasts were purchasing typically two of these cards to get performance that rose above that of higher ranked cards of the time, but critically for a better price. I do expect that given a few months after the initial rush has died down, there will be a number of cases where this is what we will be finding. Overall, Gigabyte's 660Ti OC has set the bar high for NVIDIA's other partners and we look forward to seeing what they have to put forward. Until then, this is one mighty card with a not so mighty price tag. Got a tight budget but wan't the best you can get? Then this should be seriously taken into consideration.