# MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Edition 2 GB



## W1zzard (Aug 12, 2012)

MSI's GTX 660 Ti Power Edition is one of the fastest GTX 660 Ti cards we tested today because it comes with some secret BIOS sauce that enables it to run faster than other cards at lower clocks. This is also confirmed by our overclocking tests where it reaches the highest overclocked performance of all GTX 660 Ti cards.

*Show full review*


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## dj-electric (Aug 16, 2012)

By using this card for about a week or so i can only say good things about it, mine's memory also overclocks quite well


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## W1zzard (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> mine's memory also overclocks quite well



probably because of that heatsink


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## Crap Daddy (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> By using this card for about a week or so i can only say good things about it, mine's memory also overclocks quite well



And you haven't said a word...


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## dj-electric (Aug 16, 2012)

Could be. Also got a GB WF one, uses the 218A chips and not the 219A like the MSI one.... so...



Crap Daddy said:


> And you haven't said a word...



I sign my NDAs with BLOOD :O


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 16, 2012)

Jesus this is not good for AMD lol! Their 7870 and 7950 are getting smacked around by the 660ti. :shadedshu


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## WhoDecidedThat (Aug 16, 2012)

There is peculiarity. Check this out:-
1. ASUS 660 Ti and Zotac 660 Ti achieve 1740 MHz and both get 66.6 fps.
2. Palit 660 Ti gets 1795 MHz and 69 fps.
3. MSI 660 Ti gets 1800 MHz and 69.1 fps (despite the fact that core clock is lower than Palit card).

Fps increases as memory clock increases.


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## HossHuge (Aug 16, 2012)

Hey W1zz,

Are you going to be reviewing the 3GB Galaxy model?


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## dj-electric (Aug 16, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> Jesus this is not good for AMD lol! Their 7870 and 7950 are getting smacked around by the 660ti. :shadedshu



Take off the NVIDIA goggles and see that the 660Ti perform equaly as good as 7950
minus the legendary OC abilities and 1600P performance


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## Steevo (Aug 16, 2012)

Memory starved? 20 % OC on memory and only 5% on core yields almost 13% faster. Interesting.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Take off the NVIDIA goggles and see that the 660Ti perform equaly as good as 7950
> minus the legendary OC abilities and 1600P performance



Who wears goggles?

660ti consumes very little power (135w average in games) and beats 7950 and 7870 in about 85-90% of benchmarks. And the overall performance summary is showing the 660ti a bit faster.

EDIT: well in terms of the non reference cards atleast.


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## dj-electric (Aug 16, 2012)

In terms of no actual fair compresion do you mean? Bplease, One does not simply ignore HD7950's OC


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## Nihilus (Aug 16, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> Jesus this is not good for AMD lol! Their 7870 and 7950 are getting smacked around by the 660ti. :shadedshu



Most people would not give this comment a second look given your name.  In any case, it performs on average between the HD7870 and HD 7950.  It also is priced between those two.  Settle down, all is as it should be.  



Steevo said:


> Memory starved? 20 % OC on memory and only 5% on core yields almost 13% faster. Interesting.



2 GB memory has proven to be more than enough.  The GTX 690 has proven that.  True "Memory bottleneck" comes with bandwith and overclocking increases that bandwith so performance should increase as such.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> In terms of no actual fair compresion do you mean? Bplease, One does not simply ignore HD7950's OC



yeah, then your forgetting about the GTX660ti overclocking.



Nihilus said:


> Most people would not give this comment a second look given your name.  In any case, it performs on average between the HD7870 and HD 7950.  It also is priced between those two.  Settle down, all is as it should be.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Im kidding. The 660ti reference is the same speed as a 7950 for $299. IWth the non reference cards that a clocked a bit, it beats the 7950. 

Right speed of memory can make a difference, only if that memory is starved any little bit if its memory bus size etc. However if your playing a game that is pulling all the vram you have an the FPS is lower then it should, its pull out of your system memory and that'll really bog down your game FPS. I experienced this with my GTX470 on skyrim when I had one.


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## Benetanegia (Aug 16, 2012)

SLI review?


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## W1zzard (Aug 16, 2012)

Benetanegia said:


> SLI review?



no plans


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## dj-electric (Aug 16, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> yeah, then your forgetting about the GTX660ti overclocking.



Do you really honestly think they overclock even remotely the same? really?

Than let me tell you something after 5 HD7950s and 3 GTX660Tis, they don't, not even close. As one can easily improve about 12% performance, the other about 35% (no big voltage bumps)
All of the HD7950's i've ran into can 1025Mhz at stock voltage, that is adding about 22-24% performance to HD7950's summery.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Do you really honestly think they overclock even remotely the same? really?
> 
> Than let me tell you something after 5 HD7950s and 3 GTX660Tis, they don't, not even close. As one can easily improve about 12% performance, the other about 35% (no big voltage bumps)



When did I say they overclock the same lol! If your going to overclock one. you got to overclock the other then same percentage if thats possible for it to be a fair comparison. Its a given fact for this generation that AMD cards are able to scale a fair bit better then Nvidias.


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## Widjaja (Aug 16, 2012)

I like the colour scheme.
Definite contender for my to buy list.


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## Crap Daddy (Aug 16, 2012)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> Do you really honestly think they overclock even remotely the same? really?
> 
> Than let me tell you something after 5 HD7950s and 3 GTX660Tis, they don't, not even close. As one can easily improve about 12% performance, the other about 35% (no big voltage bumps)
> All of the HD7950's i've ran into can 1025Mhz at stock voltage, that is adding about 22-24% performance to HD7950's summery.



It is obvious, apart from the overclocking advantage the 7000 series offer, that the 7950 and the 660Ti are not in the same league even if the 660Ti wins in some situations. The direct competition is the 7870 where the 660ti is the better card no doubt but price is the key here to make it a successful card.


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## Melvis (Aug 17, 2012)

Im impressed, and i haven't been to impressed by Nvidia for a few yrs now, but this card is WIN, looks like ill be going back to Nvidia next yr and getting two of these. Bit to expensive at the moment at between $350 and $410, compared to the 7870 which is between $300 and $360 which was going to be my next upgrade till this card came out.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 17, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Im impressed, and i haven't been to impressed by Nvidia for a few yrs now, but this card is WIN, looks like ill be going back to Nvidia next yr and getting two of these. Bit to expensive at the moment at between $350 and $410, compared to the 7870 which is between $300 and $360 which was going to be my next upgrade till this card came out.



what GTX660ti are you seeing at 350-410?

MSI N660Ti PE 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit ...


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## Melvis (Aug 17, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> what GTX660ti are you seeing at 350-410?
> 
> MSI N660Ti PE 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit ...



http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1428

Those ones, AUS Dollars remember


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## Widjaja (Aug 17, 2012)

Melvis said:


> http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1428
> 
> Those ones, AUS Dollars remember



Still so much cheaper than here.
424AUD for the non SC EVGA model here.


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## Melvis (Aug 17, 2012)

Widjaja said:


> Still so much cheaper than here.
> 424AUD for the non SC EVGA model here.



Yea i know, ive looked at NZ many times for parts since our dollar is kickin butt at the moment and your prices are still crazy  Gotta feel sorry for you guys.


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## Widjaja (Aug 17, 2012)

Melvis said:


> Yea i know, ive looked at NZ many times for parts since our dollar is kickin butt at the moment and your prices are still crazy  Gotta feel sorry for you guys.



I think it's more to do with the retailers than anything thing else and are probably tryng to justify the price for the card by the current price of the 560 Ti.
But still there is no good reason for the graphics card to be so high in comparison to AU sales prices.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 17, 2012)

sounds to me the max clock cap is 1080 core because after that u lose fps. its ok because on my laptop  it happens after 459mhz from 350 stock on gpu


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## alwayssts (Aug 17, 2012)

So we've learned from this review what was already apparent.

7970:  Great for compute and has bandwidth to back abundant shaders.  Those same shaders and bandwidth/buffer in comparison to ROPs hurts power efficiency in gaming, and size/power requirements hinder potential market.  Since it has more-than-enough of everything (for it's ROPs) and enough tdp to max out the process, it can justify it's price through unique abilities (bigger buffer for high-rez, greater compute/dpfp for gpgpu, absolute performance) for those willing to take the size/energy trade-off.  

680:  Very smart chip for spfp/1080p, but the no-waste design hurts yields and increases price given the state of 28nm during its (initial) lifespan.

670: 1344 (1568) Strictly shader/SFU limited versus 680...but better yields hence lower price.  Slightly less optimal shader/rops and shader/bandwidth efficiency. 

7950: 1792sp is an optimal design considering the ROP count (like 680) for gaming and smart choice for the mainstream performance part because it is using a salvage design on a new process; too much bandwidth/buffer hurts power efficiency/form factor but is a side-effect of 7970's strengths (even if niche). Clocks great because of high tdp and low-voltage binning.

660ti: 1344 (equivalent of 1568), efficient mix of rops, ram, bandwidth, and shaders and clockspeed potentials...hampered by overall units vs 7950 but better than 7870, tdp (clockspeed) and bandwidth limitations beyond ~1100mhz/7000 create a 'bottleneck' that actually fits with the design/market.  It's a smart salvage chip considering the power consumption and clocks for ram on the smaller bus with less rops and the minimum clock to expect from the 28nm process (like an AMD xx50 part at default voltage).

7870: 1280sp. Efficient mix of bandwidth, shaders, ram, and clockspeed potentials.  Clocks great and with great performance efficiency because of 170w tdp coupled with low-speed (but capable enough for the shaders at high clock) ram on a very small chip with a 256-bit bus.  Hampered by lack of shaders vs. ROPs.

In essence...they all play different angles and show where each company is compounding their efforts and expectations.  Judging purely on IPC/capabiities, 7950 is a great performance card.  660ti is a great gamer card.  7870 is a great point-of-entry for 1080p.  Although I think the 660ti could shed $20 considering the price of the competition, it's smaller and more energy efficient.  If you think purely in those terms...that's probably worth it.  Some will like the over-all more robust potential of 7950 or the capabilities/$ of 7870.  Not a bad choice in the bunch...but I still wait patiently for an AMD version of gk104 to drive prices down and performance/efficiency/form-factor/$ up.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 19, 2012)

it would appear to me the other boards are being pushed too hard beyond physical and electrical boundries hence the performance hit on the others and the gain this card has. GJ MSI!


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## W1zzard (Aug 19, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> it would appear to me the other boards are being pushed too hard beyond physical and electrical boundries hence the performance hit on the others and the gain this card has. GJ MSI!



if you push a card like that it will be unstable, not slower. msi did something to their bios to improve performance.


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## Arska (Aug 21, 2012)

From the conclusion:"The new GTX 660 Ti is almost twice as fast as the last-generation GTX 560 Ti, but comes at a $50 higher introductory cost."

50% faster according to my calculations and even the MSI card is way off from being twice as fast.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 22, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> if you push a card like that it will be unstable, not slower. msi did something to their bios to improve performance.



instability causes a perf hit initially before crashing i learned this with an m18 gc. 109 mhz clock increase for core 116 mhz increase for ram from stock of 350 300 was the top before artifacts frame loss


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## Jimmy2k9 (Aug 26, 2012)

Finally made the decision to go with this card for my 660ti, this review made me pull the trigger just bought it.


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## Bengali (Sep 5, 2012)

What are the exact settings that Heaven 2.0 was run at in the review? I want to do a test run on my 7870 clocked at 1200Mhz core/1400Mhz memory to do a comparison to this card.


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## Bengali (Sep 5, 2012)

Anyone?


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## pazot (Mar 1, 2015)

In the screen 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





  it is written that the video card in idle mode operates under 32 degrees.

In fact, it is much colder, http://prntscr.com/6bjn2w What do you say?


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 8, 2015)

Do you realize this threads almost 3 years old.


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