Verdict and Conclusion
Gigabyte and Nvidia have done a good job here, not only does this Gigabyte GTX660 Ti OC Version beat the last generation’s top card, it also absolutely runs rampant through the ~$300 price category. It stomps the $300 7870 into the dirt and then proceeds to chase the 7950 down and smack it around a bit as well.
The card runs very cool even under 100% load overclocked, Gigabyte’s custom cooler is excellent. The fans are very quiet up to around 75% speed, at that speed something in the heatsink starts rattling. I don’t know whether the full retail versions will have this issue, my sample has been around and about a bit before it got to me and something may have gotten knocked loose. It doesn’t matter overly much because overclocked the fan speed didn’t actually make it to the 75% mark! I only noticed when I manually cranked the fan speed up for testing.
The fans and shroud feel a bit flimsy, which is awkward as they’re the largest part on the card and the easiest way to pick it up and install it without touching static sensitive bits. I spent some time abusing the fan housing and it is actually pretty strong, it just feels dubious. The whole thing is darkly smoked plastic, modders could have a wonderful time with it and some LEDs.
The GTX660Ti has plenty of outputs, DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and Display port are all represented and full sized. That should cover pretty much everybody.
The card looks pretty cool, not very different than previous coolers that use these fans, but they look nice so that’s ok.
I find the price difference between the GTX670 and the GTX660Ti to be offensive given that they use the same core, the same PCB and the same number of ram chips (most versions do, not just Gigabyte’s). Production costs are almost certainly within a few dollars of each other. The performance difference is due to where the ram chips are soldered (192bit vs 256bit) and the TDP / turbo boost limits. This means that either the GTX670 is wildly overpriced or the GTX660Ti is wildly underpriced. Either way, at $300 this is an excellent card.
Given the overclocking performance I’d be quiet surprised if the card wasn’t able to OC a lot further if there was more room on the power % slider. On the overclocking front I was not impressed with Gigabyte’s overclocking software. It’s very slow to use and behaves very strangely. Thankfully other software works just fine for OCing the card. While OCing I was interested to find that the card keeps very close track of how much power it is drawing and works carefully to keep itself right at its TDP. This makes estimating how much power your build will use much easier.
All told there are a lot of pros:
- Very good performance for the price.
- Very quiet and effective cooler.
- Fairly compact card for the performance.
- Lots of useful display outputs.
- Overclocks easily and gains a lot from it.
There are a few cons too:
- Makes people that bought a GTX670 look kind of silly.
- Cooler rattles at full fan speed.
- Overclocking artificially limited by Nvidia (as with the whole GTX6xx series).
That’s a lot of pros and not much for cons, this is, as of right now, a very good buy. I give it one of the highest GPU ratings in Funky Kit history, a 9.5/10! If you’re in the market for a new GPU and are looking to spend $300-$350 this is the card to buy. If you were looking to spend $250, cough up the extra cash, it’s worth it.
SCORE
9.5/10
Related Product:
