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Dear TR,
Just upgraded to a gtx 660 ti, and HOLY CRAP. The smoothness. I can't believe it's not butter!

I'm a big time lurker here on TR, and I have to say, having just upgraded from a radeon 6xxx series card, the differences in smoothness are remarkable. Thank you THANK YOU TR for getting me used to looking at frame times, not just FPS.

I figured it would be nice to have a thank you post, instead of the usual help/fanboy/complaining thread.

There's no need to thank them. It's their job and i hope they do it with pleasure.

Also coming from a yeasteryear generation and presumably to a higher tier from current gen, the smoothness gain would have been unavoidable even if you went for a HD 7870 (which is actually, for the most part, faster than the GTX 580 which was faster than any HD 6000 single GPU card).

Will you really be thanking them after realizing you can't use tessellation with that card?
http://techreport.com/review/23419/nvid ... reviewed/8
tessellation off
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/ ... gb/?page=6
tessellation on
As long as you keep tessellation off, it'll be fast, but your fill rate is pretty limited. In fact, it's kind of like the 460-768mb, and here's what TR had to say about it:

Since it's down one memory interface/ROP partition, it has 24 ROPs, a 192-bit memory path, and 384KB of L2 cache. You're giving up a lot more than 256MB of memory by going with the 768MB version, and we understand that "GeForce GTX 455" is available. You know there will be folks who pick up a GTX 460 768MB without realizing it's a lesser product. The GTX 460 768MB isn't bad, but such confusion isn't good for consumers.

Total hypocrisy.

I suppose that won't bother you though, upgrading from 6xxx series. Can't miss what you never had, but at least the drivers are better.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

Will you really be thanking them after realizing you can't use tessellation with that card?
http://techreport.com/review/23419/nvid ... reviewed/8
tessellation off
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/ ... gb/?page=6
tessellation on

Seems like you can use it? The result for 1080p was pretty good. So 1920x1200 should be ok.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

As long as you keep tessellation off, it'll be fast, but your fill rate is pretty limited. In fact, it's kind of like the 460-768mb, and here's what TR had to say about it:

Since it's down one memory interface/ROP partition, it has 24 ROPs, a 192-bit memory path, and 384KB of L2 cache. You're giving up a lot more than 256MB of memory by going with the 768MB version, and we understand that "GeForce GTX 455" is available. You know there will be folks who pick up a GTX 460 768MB without realizing it's a lesser product. The GTX 460 768MB isn't bad, but such confusion isn't good for consumers.

Total hypocrisy.

Not sure you are ranting here about talking about the GTX 460-768MB.

In your infinite wisdom, should the OP get the 670 for 1920x1200 instead? That seems like overkill.

Flying Fox wrote:

In your infinite wisdom, should the OP get the 670 for 1920x1200 instead? That seems like overkill.

There is no such thing!

Flying Fox wrote:

In your infinite wisdom, should the OP get the 670 for 1920x1200 instead? That seems like overkill.

It is overkill, for the price, but not for performance. The new 7870 1536 would be what I'd get if I had to buy now, but I'd rather wait for the 760 Ti, which won't be crippled with a 192-bit bus.

Tessellation is another silly gimmick like FSAA. It is nice to have, if you have extra power to spare. It is not a deal breaker if you cannot use it without killing your framerate. The success of HD 5xxx and 6xxx family despite their architecture's shortcomings to tessellation is a testement to that. Despite, all of Nvidia's marketing drones attempts to make tessellation into the "Next Big Thing".

192-bit memory bus being a "handycap" is grossly exaggerated. The 660Ti is paired with absurdity fast GDDR5 chips and memory bandwidth isn't everything. It is only an issue when your trying drive 4Megapixels or more with AA/AF on top. The 660Ti doesn't even have fill-rate and shading power to keep up nor any cards within its tier or lower. In other words, gamers who care enough about 4Megapixel gaming with AA/AF are already shooting for 680/7970 or greater.

I get what you're saying, but it's not worth plinking down $300 when you can't turn on tessellation, which absolutely was marketed to hell by nvidia. The 192-bit bus crippling isn't exaggerated. You literally get a 20% drop in performance from it, and that bus speed is a physical wall that can't be overcome with driver updates, unlike AMD's 7950. The 660 Ti may be a good performer without tessellation, but I wouldn't buy it unless the price dropped to $199. With AMD making massive cards without blowers, and nvidia crippling the mid-range, I'm going to sit this out until there's some better options. It isn't like there's any games out that need an upgrade, but if one does comes out, I'm sure the 660 Ti won't run it very well either. It's planned obsolescence.

Krogoth wrote:

Tessellation is another silly gimmick like FSAA. It is nice to have, if you have extra power to spare. It is not a deal breaker if you cannot use it without killing your framerate.

Even when it's being used for things like the stone roads in the Heaven benchmark? I haven't seen any games use tesselation as such yet, but that doesn't mean it's not a viable technique.


edit:

Krogoth wrote:

In other words, gamers who care enough about 4Megapixel gaming with AA/AF are already shooting for 680/7970 or greater.

Or an overclocked 7950..

We are talking 1920x1200 here, which is 2.3 megapixel gaming. I think the framerate with tessellation on should be ok. Of course you don't turn it up to 11.

To be fair, i got it for 230USD, not the full retail price. I tested crysis 2 last night, with object density to extreme (to avoid the over tessellation issue), and it ran great.

I think it's a bit premature to extrapolate tessellation performance of the 660Ti based on a single game (Batman: Arkham City) that already has known issues with the bugginess and efficiency (or lack thereof) of its DX11 codepath.

By comparison, the 660Ti performs equivalently to a 7950 in Unigine Heaven, even at extreme tesselation settings.

Historically, tessellation in games has been a poorly-implemented and poorly-optimized feature at the best of times, and I don't consider it a crucial discriminator at present when choosing a GPU.

Sputnik7, happy to be of service. I appreciate the thanks, even if it is my job.

Just wanted to add that l33t-g4m3r is evidently conflating fill rate with polygon throughput (i.e., tessellation) performance. The two are generally not related. I've explained more here in response to the same strange assertion:

http://techreport.com/discussion/24218/ ... ost=703749

Damage wrote:

Sputnik7, happy to be of service. I appreciate the thanks, even if it is my job.

Just wanted to add that l33t-g4m3r is evidently conflating fill rate with polygon throughput (i.e., tessellation) performance. The two are generally not related. I've explained more here in response to the same strange assertion:

http://techreport.com/discussion/24218/ ... ost=703749

Holy crap Damage commented on my thread! *squee*

Congrats on the new card for a decent price. I'm gonna rock on my gtx 560 ti for awhile longer on my hp zr24w. Honestly I'm happy with the performance at this time. Really I need to upgrade from these 30 dollar speakers since my altec lansing fx 6021's died lol. I can't stand headphones.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

Flying Fox wrote:

In your infinite wisdom, should the OP get the 670 for 1920x1200 instead? That seems like overkill.

It is overkill, for the price, but not for performance. The new 7870 1536 would be what I'd get if I had to buy now, but I'd rather wait for the 760 Ti, which won't be crippled with a 192-bit bus.

That HardOCP review (second link above) was ridiculous. They were they comparing a hugely overclocked HD 7870 MYST (with the Tahiti core) to a stock 660 Ti and claiming that because the overclocked card was slightly better in some situations than a stock 660 Ti, that the HD 7870 was the better card? The 660 Ti's performance was very close to the 7870 in most games tested, and it beat the 7870 by a good margin in Far Cry 3. Their conclusion sealed the deal:

If it was the intent for this card to be a "GTX 660 Ti Killer" then it has been successful at carrying that out

Okay... I guess they were trying to highlight the point that this HD 7870 with the Tahiti core could experience significantly improved performance due to it having overclocking headroom/scaling commensurate with other Tahiti cards - and in this sense is superior to the 660 Ti... But just blatantly comparing a stock card vs a highly overclocked card and claiming the highly overclocked card is better is a little odd for review methodology.

I do see what you mean by the memory bandwidth limitation impacting the 660 Ti with MSAA, etc. If I was looking for a video card in the $250 range, I'd give this new 7870 a good look. However, if you wait for sales, you can generally score an HD 7950 for only a few bucks more, so why settle for a more crippled version?

cynan wrote:

However, if you wait for sales, you can generally score an HD 7950 for only a few bucks more, so why settle for a more crippled version?

Exactly. It's only a good deal at it's current price point in comparison to the alternative. I wouldn't settle for it, I'd wait for the uncrippled 760 Ti.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

cynan wrote:

However, if you wait for sales, you can generally score an HD 7950 for only a few bucks more, so why settle for a more crippled version?

Exactly. It's only a good deal at it's current price point in comparison to the alternative. I wouldn't settle for it, I'd wait for the uncrippled 760 Ti.

Well if you put it like that, I'd have been enjoying my HD7950 for well over a year by the time that 760 Ti comes around. It's not exactly relevant to the discussion is it?

Firestarter wrote:

l33t-g4m3r wrote:

cynan wrote:

However, if you wait for sales, you can generally score an HD 7950 for only a few bucks more, so why settle for a more crippled version?

Exactly. It's only a good deal at it's current price point in comparison to the alternative. I wouldn't settle for it, I'd wait for the uncrippled 760 Ti.

Well if you put it like that, I'd have been enjoying my HD7950 for well over a year by the time that 760 Ti comes around. It's not exactly relevant to the discussion is it?

I dunno. When will the 760 Ti come out? If the 7950 drops to $250, and the 760 Ti won't be released for another year, then I would consider it, but as it stands I'd rather wait for the 760 Ti.