34 replies to this topic

[DirtyLarry]

Should I upgrade from my current setup of 2 460's in SLi to a single GTX 660 Ti***?

EVGA GTX 660Ti from Amazon

Cost is not an issue (fortunately), so just wondering if people think this is a worthwhile upgrade? Or should I just ride out the 460's some more?
Would I even see any real improvement in performance?
Or would performance be more or less the same, just power consumption would be less, I would get a few of the newer features of the 600 series? And also just have one card rather then two.

The specs of the GTX 660 Ti are as follows...

• 2048MB GDDR5 Memory
  
• PCI-E 3.0 16x
  
• 980Mhz GPU Clock Speed
  
• 6008Mhz Memory Clock Speed
  
• NVIDIA SLI ready

The specs of my GTX 460's are...

• 1024MB Memory
  
• PCI-E 2.0 16x
  
• 867Mhz GPU Clock Speed
  
• 4050Mhz Memory Clock Speed
  
• NVIDIA SLI ready

So yeah, what does everyone think?
If I do wind up upgrading, I will (probably) have the 2 GTX 460's for sale, and I can transfer over the lifetime warranty.

TIA,
DL

***Please Note - I am a Nvidia person. Just my preferred video card vendor, so please no "you should go with an AMD 7950." Just will never happen, as I said that is my preference.

[+PeterUK]

In games that don't do SLi yes but not so must for games that support SLi for two GTX 460 in SLi vs GTX 660 Ti as its even for most games.

[+sanke1]

If cost is not a concern, get GTX670. It's more futureproof with better bus width.

[DirtyLarry]

PeterUK, on 19 August 2012 - 12:32, said:

In games that don't do SLi yes but not so must for games that support SLi for two GTX 460 in SLi vs GTX 660 Ti as its even for most games.

Just curious, where are you seeing it is more or less even? I literally spent a good 30 minutes last night trying to find benchmarks with 460's in SLi and then benchmarks for 660 Ti, and could find hardly any for the same games. So are you just going purely on specs? If you have any benchmarks to share, please share away.

sanke1, on 19 August 2012 - 12:37, said:

If cost is not a concern, get GTX670. It's more futureproof with better bus width.

Well, maybe I should have said the cost of $300 is not really an issue. When you jump up to between $400-$450, yeah that starts getting to be to much IMO, and the reason I am considering the 660 is currently it holds its own pretty damn well with the 670. I have indeed read that future games would be an issue because of the bus, which at that point I was thinking then I could just maybe get another 660 and SLi those?

So really not sure what to do. Right now Borderlands 2 is free with any 600 series cards, which was also part of the reason I was considering it, as I see it as the card is almost then $250

[Detection]

I haven't had an SLi setup, but I have had a lot of CFX setups and 1 powerful card would win over 2 medium cards any day purely because of absolute shoddy drivers for CFX setups / lack of ability for create CAPs for many games

[+BeLGaRaTh]

A factory OC'd 660 is within 5-10FPS tp the 670 (according to Guru3D) but with either the 660 or 670 there won't be that much of a difference to what you have now, you will experience the same performance more or less, maybe slightly better than the SLi you have now.

Best option is to SLi 2x 660's then you have close to 690 performance.

That's what I am doing, it wil cost £450 or so for two 660's, a 680 is around that price so basically NVidia have done what they did with the 400 series and made the '60 version the best to get in SLi format.

Hope that helps, as I know you did the 460 SLi around the same time as me, and that's what I'm doing this time around.

[+PeterUK]

DirtyLarry, on 19 August 2012 - 14:10, said:

Just curious, where are you seeing it is more or less even? I literally spent a good 30 minutes last night trying to find benchmarks with 460's in SLi and then benchmarks for 660 Ti, and could find hardly any for the same games. So are you just going purely on specs? If you have any benchmarks to share, please share away.

The only way to compare the two is to not compare the two in the same banchmark.

GTX 460 1GB SLI
http://www.anandtech...nch/Product/314
http://hexus.net/tec...eating-gtx-480/
GTX 660 Ti
http://www.anandtech...nch/Product/647
http://hexus.net/tec...-gv-n66toc-2gd/

Metro 2033 - 1920 x 1200 - DX11 Very High Quality + Analytical AA/16xAF
GTX 460 1GB SLI 40 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS
Crysis: Warhead - 1920 x 1200 - Frost Bench - Gamer Quality + Enthusiast Shaders + 4xAA
GTX 460 1GB SLI 61.9 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS 38.8 FPS
Aliens vs. Predator 1080p 1920 x 1200
GTX 460 1GB SLI 54 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS 45.4 FPS

[DirtyLarry]

Detection, on 19 August 2012 - 14:17, said:

I haven't had an SLi setup, but I have had a lot of CFX setups and 1 powerful card would win over 2 medium cards any day purely because of absolute shoddy drivers for CFX setups / lack of ability for create CAPs for many games

Yeah luckily, SLi is much more widely supported then CFX. But I still did encounter a few games that did not have an SLi setup at launch.

BeLGaRaTh, on 19 August 2012 - 14:24, said:

A factory OC'd 660 is within 5-10FPS tp the 670 (according to Guru3D) but with either the 660 or 670 there won't be that much of a difference to what you have now, you will experience the same performance more or less, maybe slightly better than the SLi you have now.

Best option is to SLi 2x 660's then you have close to 690 performance.

That's what I am doing, it wil cost £450 or so for two 660's, a 680 is around that price so basically NVidia have done what they did with the 400 series and made the '60 version the best to get in SLi format.

Hope that helps, as I know you did the 460 SLi around the same time as me, and that's what I'm doing this time around.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty solid plan. Meaning getting the two cards instead of the one. When do you plan on doing it?

PeterUK, on 19 August 2012 - 15:18, said:

The only way to compare the two is to not compare the two in the same banchmark.

GTX 460 1GB SLI
http://www.anandtech...nch/Product/314
http://hexus.net/tec...eating-gtx-480/
GTX 660 Ti
http://www.anandtech...nch/Product/647
http://hexus.net/tec...-gv-n66toc-2gd/

Metro 2033 - 1920 x 1200 - DX11 Very High Quality + Analytical AA/16xAF
GTX 460 1GB SLI 40 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS
Crysis: Warhead - 1920 x 1200 - Frost Bench - Gamer Quality + Enthusiast Shaders + 4xAA
GTX 460 1GB SLI 61.9 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS 38.8 FPS
Aliens vs. Predator 1080p 1920 x 1200
GTX 460 1GB SLI 54 FPS
GTX 660 Ti 47.5 FPS 45.4 FPS

Nice thanks, i was having issues finding the 460 SLi benchmarks for the same games that had the 660 benchmarks.

So actually these benchmarks say it all to me right now. I think I am going to hold off until I can either get 2 660's as BeLGaRaTh said above, or perhaps even one higher end card.

So truly thanks for finding these, it has saved me spending $310 right now.

[ahhell]

Just the power savings alone would be worth it. The Nvidia 4 series weren't exactly very efficient.

[dcghost]

Not sure...I know I will be upgrading to it from a 260 GTX...a bit less of a debate

[Zlip792]

Simple Logic:
2x GTX 460 in SLi >= GTX 580 but limited to 1 GB VRAM
GTX 660 Ti > GTX 580 with more VRAM

So go ahead...

[+BeLGaRaTh]

DirtyLarry, on 19 August 2012 - 15:40, said:

Yeah luckily, SLi is much more widely supported then CFX. But I still did encounter a few games that did not have an SLi setup at launch.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty solid plan. Meaning getting the two cards instead of the one. When do you plan on doing it?

Nice thanks, i was having issues finding the 460 SLi benchmarks for the same games that had the 660 benchmarks.

So actually these benchmarks say it all to me right now. I think I am going to hold off until I can either get 2 660's as BeLGaRaTh said above, or perhaps even one higher end card.

So truly thanks for finding these, it has saved me spending $310 right now.

SLi profiles are generally easy to make though, as you know

Plan on either end of this month or middle of next, dependng on bank sorting some issues out

There wasn't a lot of comparisons I could find either, but reading 660/670 Benches and rreading between the lines for the 460 SLi I found that the single card performance was ever so slightly better on the OC'd 660/base 670 cards.

Best bet is the SLi 660's I can see NVidia dropping the 670 now that the 660 is out as they are so close in Benches etc. Also 2x660's are about the price of a 680 and half the prie of a 690 which SLi would bring the performance too. A no brainer IMO like the SLi 460's in the day

[DirtyLarry]

Well, I forgot I owed my wife exactly $300 towards my brother in laws wedding gift from his wedding last weekend, and when I was doing my banking this past Friday and realized I had an extra $300 I will give you one guess what that $300 was going towards?
I should have realized I usually just do not have an extra $300 for no reason.
So think I will be holding off for the immediate future, should be able to pull it off in 2 weeks once my next paycheck comes in.
Thanks again for the replies all.

[Detection]

DirtyLarry, on 19 August 2012 - 16:36, said:

Well, I forgot I owed my wife exactly $300 towards my brother in laws wedding gift from his wedding last weekend, and when I was doing my banking this past Friday and realized I had an extra $300 I will give you one guess what that $300 was going towards?
I should have realized I usually just do not have an extra $300 for no reason.
So think I will be holding off for the immediate future, should be able to pull it off in 2 weeks once my next paycheck comes in.
Thanks again for the replies all.

Just tell her you lost $3000 on the horses, wait for her to go mad, then calm her down with "Only jokin love, actually I only spent $300 on a GPU" then she won't be half as mad as she would otherwise

[Manarift]

also the 660Ti is the first mainstream GPU to support tri-sli or quad not sure on quad...