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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti SLI Performance Analysis

By James Lu - 5 Sep 2012

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti SLI Performance Analysis

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti SLI Performance Analysis

We were very impressed with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 660 Ti, an upper mid-range graphics card priced at US$299, utilizing the same GK104 core found in NVIDIA's GTX 670 and flagship GTX 680 cards. In our performance tests the GTX 660 Ti performed much better than its competitor from AMD, the Radeon HD 7870, and even beat AMD's upper-tier HD 7950 on the majority of tests. In NVIDIA's lineup, the GTX 660 Ti's overall performance put it just behind NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 670.

Thanks to its reasonable price point compared to high-end cards, we reckon many enthusiasts would be considering the basic GTX 660 Ti for a two-way SLI configuration. To fulfill that desire, today we're going to find out just how well a pair GTX 660 Ti cards can perform.

We've downclocked our MSI and Gigabyte custom models to reference specs to give you a baseline indication of how the GTX 660 Ti will perform in 2-way SLI configuration.

 

Test Setup

To evaluate the GeForce GTX 660 Ti’s performance in a 2-way SLI configuration, we will be using our same Intel X58 setup which has the following specifications:

  • Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
  • Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
  • 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
  • Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
  • Windows 7 Ultimate

As no reference design is available for the GTX 660 Ti (at the point of our test), we'll be using custom cards downclocked to reference specs, which should give you an idea of the bare minimum performance you can expect out of a GTX 660 Ti 2-way SLI configuration.
 

The full list of cards tested and driver versions used:

  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 2-way SLI (ForceWare 305.37)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 305.37)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB GDDR5 2-way SLI (ForceWare 301.33)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.33)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.33)
  • AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 2-way CrossFireX (AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview Version)
  • AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 12.2 Preview Version)
  • AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 2-way CrossFireX (AMD Catalyst 12.3)
  • AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 12.3)

We did not include NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 as its single card performance is quite close to the GTX 670, while its SLI performance is very close to the GTX 690.
 

The list of benchmarks used:

  • Futuremark 3DMark 11
  • Unigine Heaven V2.1
  • Far Cry 2
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Crysis 2
  • Batman: Arkham City
  • Dirt 3
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
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