GTX 660. The best bang for your buck?

The 660 was recenlty launched and I believe it has superb value. Its gonna be under 250 and the performance is somewhere between the 570 and the 580 or for amd the 7870 i believe. Very strong performance at very good prices. What more could someone want :D Plus the card is quite small and can be fit in small cases and it requires only a single pcie connector. :D Cherios. I believe this will hit home. :D :D Getting this :)

The 660 was recenlty launched and I believe it has superb value. Its gonna be under 250 and the performance is somewhere between the 570 and the 580 or for amd the 7870 i believe. Very strong performance at very good prices. What more could someone want :D Plus the card is quite small and can be fit in small cases and it requires only a single pcie connector. :D Cherios. I believe this will hit home. :D :D Getting this :)

Diwashb

Not all the 660's are small, some use extended fans which extend the length of the card to full size, only a certain few have a smaller heatsink and fan which take advantage of the smaller PCB Aren't the 660 and the 7870 similar in performance? I plan on keeping this for a good 3-4 years so yes driver support does matter hence the nvidia though. I would put my thoughts in of the 7870, but you seem pretty set on the 660WWIAB

So do you think the GTX 660 will last for 3-4 years if I get it?

So do you think the GTX 660 will last for 3-4 years if I get it?

johnd13

So do you think the GTX 660 will last for 3-4 years if I get it?

johnd13

In my country i got a 7950 for the same price as a GTX 660, so no, the 7950 definitely takes the cake

[QUOTE="johnd13"]

So do you think the GTX 660 will last for 3-4 years if I get it?

Diwashb

I' m playing at a pretty low res too at least for modern gaming standards so I guess I should give the 660 a thought.

The 7870 is better.

Which MSI version?WWIAB

What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.achilles614

What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.achilles614

What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.achilles614

The 7870 is better.

Lox_Cropek

What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.achilles614

This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.General_X

[QUOTE="General_X"]This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.Guppy507

[QUOTE="achilles614"]What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.Guppy507

This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.General_X

In the UK GTX 660 is £180 and most 7870s are £200 to £230 so I think it's great value

[QUOTE="Guppy507"]

[QUOTE="achilles614"] Their performance difference is completely negligible. Overall the 660 seems to perform BETTER than the 7870 (turns out I made this up, ignore it), but its by such a small margin that it doesn't even matter(I do stand behind this though, that 3-5% difference in Metro 2033 and The Witcher 2 doesn't really matter when it outperforms the 7870 in Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, and Skyrim).

[QUOTE="General_X"]This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.achilles614

[QUOTE="achilles614"][QUOTE="Guppy507"]
If you game at 2560x1600, you shouldn't be buying a sub-300 dollar video card to begin with.Diwashb

[QUOTE="Guppy507"]

[QUOTE="achilles614"] Their performance difference is completely negligible. Overall the 660 seems to perform BETTER than the 7870 (turns out I made this up, ignore it), but its by such a small margin that it doesn't even matter(I do stand behind this though, that 3-5% difference in Metro 2033 and The Witcher 2 doesn't really matter when it outperforms the 7870 in Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, and Skyrim).

[QUOTE="General_X"]This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.achilles614

I game at 1080p. So i guess I will consider the 7870 as well. Hmm though I am quite scared about the 7870 driver support on the long run though :/ Lets wait for the pricing on the 660 though because that will be the main deciding factor. Diwashb

7950 is king.

[QUOTE="achilles614"]What resolution do you game at? The 660 is a pretty cut down card. I would go for the 7870.Guppy507

This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.General_X

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6276/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-review-gk106-rounds-out-the-kepler-family/4

[QUOTE="Guppy507"]

[QUOTE="achilles614"] Their performance difference is completely negligible. Overall the 660 seems to perform BETTER than the 7870 (turns out I made this up, ignore it), but its by such a small margin that it doesn't even matter(I do stand behind this though, that 3-5% difference in Metro 2033 and The Witcher 2 doesn't really matter when it outperforms the 7870 in Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, and Skyrim).

[QUOTE="General_X"]This, if you game at above 1080p the 660's cut-down memory bandwith really hurts it.JigglyWiggly_

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6276/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-review-gk106-rounds-out-the-kepler-family/4

7950 is king.

jakes456

@JigglyWiggly - you do know that AMD cards always rock Crysis harder than Nvidia cards do right? Also, here are some other benchmarks from LinusTechTips. The Witcher 2 is the only game that's any kind of significant difference in favor of AMD. Given the price, it falls perfectly in line with everything else.

Its all nitpicking. Real world difference between the cards is pretty much nothing, it comes down to whether you want 2 power connectors or just 1, or your card to exhaust outside the case or inside. :P

gross 35fps need at least 70fps,

my 460s in sli on anandtech benched 65 fps at 1920x1080 un oc'd

and yeah the small memory bandwidth makes nvidia get wrecked still,

if I get a new gpu I want it to at least run Crysis at 100~ fps at 1920x1080 and nothing will do that,

except maybe 2x7970s oc'd not that I would ever do CF with ati again

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5805/nvidia-geforce-gtx-690-review-ultra-expensive-ultra-rare-ultra-fast/5

i'd prefer 150fps though

i dont want dips below 120fps

for pure power the radeon 7xxx series are more powerful than nvidia cards. Nvidia does have shaders and a little better tessellation but overall the power advantage is in AMD's favor, simply because nvidias new cards have much less transistors. They opted to cut out the transistors in the geforce 600 series just to save some $$ and milk their base as hard as possible. So no doubt the radeon 7000 series is a better bang for buck than the geforce 600 series. Also the driver support for the 7000 series is excellent, even for 5 year old cards the driver support is rock solid. The only difference is after 4-5 years, AMD puts their cards on legacy support which means updates come every 3 months. Well by that time the graphics card won't be able to run any new games properly anyways so driver updates should be the least of your concerns.

for pure power the radeon 7xxx series are more powerful than nvidia cards. Nvidia does have shaders and a little better tessellation but overall the power advantage is in AMD's favor, simply because nvidias new cards have much less transistors. They opted to cut out the transistors in the geforce 600 series just to save some $$ and milk their base as hard as possible. So no doubt the radeon 7000 series is a better bang for buck than the geforce 600 series. Also the driver support for the 7000 series is excellent, even for 5 year old cards the driver support is rock solid. The only difference is after 4-5 years, AMD puts their cards on legacy support which means updates come every 3 months. Well by that time the graphics card won't be able to run any new games properly anyways so driver updates should be the least of your concerns.

blaznwiipspman1

The issue with the 660 Ti isn't GPU power so much as it is memory bandwidth. I think the regular 660 has an appropriate amount of bandwidth to go with the GPU. The 670 and 680 match up nicely with their AMD counterparts, despite having significantly less memory bandwidth than 7950 and 7970. I think that's because once you get over about 180 gb/s, it's pretty much gravy for single-monitor setups.

The transistor count has little or nothing to do with the (relative) struggles of the 660 and 660 Ti. It's almost all memory subsystem and ROP count.