660 SLI vs 1060?

Ashton

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 13, 2004
Messages
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Despite it being 2018, I am still running a GTX 660 and while it is still able to run more modern titles like Fallout 4, it is starting to stumble with FPS drops and lowered or disabled effects.

I'm trying to decide whether dropping another ~$30-$50 for a second 660 and running them in SLI would be worth the effort and if it would buy me more time to upgrade, or if its time to finally take the 660 out back and put it out of its misery in exchange for a 1060 (if I get lucky on ebay...)
 
1 more powerful card will always be better than 2 in SLI. If I had the choice, it would be no contest, 1060 all the way.
 
It all depends on budget really. GTX 1060 will be a far better experience. Not even comparable. For games that scale well, you'd see benefit from SLI, but a single card that's more powerful is almost always a better solution.
 
Get a newer card, the better card...you'll be happy. SLi isn't "dead" but it's certainly dying and you'll just not see the performance out of it that you would if you went single more powerful card oriented.

I just recently left a 970 SLi setup for a 1080. I was going to go the RTX route, but something about the whole roll out bugs me, and I rather wait to see how the tech pans out. So, I didn't invest too much on a used 1080.
 
I'm still running 3x 680 in SLI. A lot more games still support 2 cards in SLI than 3 so at least you would be good to go there. If you really want to upgrade to a faster single card, I'd recommend picking up a used 980 Ti. You see them all over the place right now for ~$250 which is cheaper than the 1060, but the 980 Ti will give you ~1070 level performance.
 
honestly, if you want the maximum bang for buck in a new card, unless you have a vendetta against AMD, grab an RX570. They can be had for super cheap, and will be 2-4x faster than your setup.
 
honestly, if you want the maximum bang for buck in a new card, unless you have a vendetta against AMD, grab an RX570. They can be had for super cheap, and will be 2-4x faster than your setup.

Eh... I'm a little scared of AMD after my last desktop (which was an AMD physical 8-core that severely underperformed compared to my i7 quad core and my current Xeon 6-core) but given the price... I'm gonna have to do a lot of research on it since it does seem a LOT better (which is sadly exactly what I thought about my AMD 8-core CPU and it turned out to be a turd...)

But none the less, thank you for the info, I honestly hadn't even thought to compare anything except NVidea!
 
If you're talking about the Bulldozer AMD CPUs, those were terrible. If you're talking about Ryzen well, strange...
 
If you're talking about the Bulldozer AMD CPUs, those were terrible. If you're talking about Ryzen well, strange...

It was the generation before Ryzen, like second from the top-tier CPU, I don't remember exactly and sadly the MoBo died from severe stupid-user-syndrome (a metallic tag from a nearby cable got caught in a ram slot and it never powered up again) and possibly other things too... don't remember all the details leading up to the final failure but until then it was a lousy but still useable CPU as long as I didn't bother trying to game on it.
 
It was the generation before Ryzen, like second from the top-tier CPU, I don't remember exactly and sadly the MoBo died from severe stupid-user-syndrome (a metallic tag from a nearby cable got caught in a ram slot and it never powered up again) and possibly other things too... don't remember all the details leading up to the final failure but until then it was a lousy but still useable CPU as long as I didn't bother trying to game on it.

Yeah, you had a bulldozer. Only the most flamboyant AMD fanboys would argue bulldozer was anything but a trash fire. To give you an idea, The lowest-end Ryzen single-handedly beats the highest-end (excepting the 200w parts) bulldozer CPU. I had the generation before Bulldozer (phenom II) and I was so disappointed with what AMd was offering that I went Intel Xeon for my upgrade, so I totally understand.
 
If you think a 660 is even an option, youd be happy with a 1060 for years to come.
 
the 1060 will likely give you a better gaming experience. a lot of games use more vram now, so you will have more processing power but only 2gb vram. I had a GTX 590 which was basically GTX 570s in sli on a single card with 2gb or less of vram and it got to the point where I couldn't get reasonably decent frames in newer games. If you can find the the GTX 970, it is a good value and can come close to a gtx 1060 performance wise.
 
Figure out what your absolute max budget is. Create a list of three cards or possibilities. Plug those in to a parts finder and get a feel for their price. Then, take a moment and browse the trade forums of here and a few other of your favorite sites. I'm also suggest looking into official ebay market places for GPU company's like, EVGA. See what their closeouts are currently looking like.

You might be surprised at the level of which you could afford. Especially with everyone bailing out on 10XX series currently. I wouldn't go lower than the 9XX series myself.
 
I held out for way too long on sli 560 ti's until December of last year, believe it or not. Really isn't worth it, and one thing you really need to consider - sli doesn't add up the vram, it mirrors it. So that's what's going to hurt you a lot, being vram starved. Go for the 1060 even if you can get the second 660 for $50 I say. Alternatively, a 570 or 580 would be a good bet too, pretty affordable and honestly don't compare amd's old cpu line with the gpu lineup. I had the 8 core 8350 oc'd to 4.6ghz on all cores, and yeah it wasn't that great at all. AMD does't have much on the super high end (thus why I got a 1080 ti) but I just picked up a used 4gb 580 for 180 and it's great in the secondary pc.
 
660 is so old at this point you're way better off just getting a newer card than trying to sli. I've seen people selling 1060 3gb models used for under $150 shipped.
 
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660 is very old now. And with it's 2GB ram it's not able to handle modern games properly. SLI Won't help that. At this point I think even a 1050ti would offer a better experience than 660 SLI in most games.
 
Depending on the prices you find. I went from a 660 (2gb) to a 980 (non-ti (4gb)) and it was a big upgrade. The kids are still using the 660 today for games like Minecraft, Rocket League, The Sims 4 and of course Fortnite.

I agree with those commenting about the memories. you just need more of them to game today. It sounds like I am similar to you for gaming pc goes. Try to get as much as you can as long as you can. I don't play with all the latest eye candy turned on and still use a 1080p monitor (120Hz) to play Cities Skylines, Rocket League, PUBG, CS:GO, Fortnite, BF3, BF1, Farcry 4 (i think it was that one.. lol, it's been a while) and GTA:V.

I'll second setting a budget then researching a few cards to see which edges out FTW. While I'd like a new card, I know I don't NEED it. The 980 is still a beefy card today as long as you're realistic. While your GPU is due for an upgrade, what is your HDD? That is another worthwhile area to look at upgrading if you haven't already.
 
Depending on the prices you find. I went from a 660 (2gb) to a 980 (non-ti (4gb)) and it was a big upgrade. The kids are still using the 660 today for games like Minecraft, Rocket League, The Sims 4 and of course Fortnite.

I agree with those commenting about the memories. you just need more of them to game today. It sounds like I am similar to you for gaming pc goes. Try to get as much as you can as long as you can. I don't play with all the latest eye candy turned on and still use a 1080p monitor (120Hz) to play Cities Skylines, Rocket League, PUBG, CS:GO, Fortnite, BF3, BF1, Farcry 4 (i think it was that one.. lol, it's been a while) and GTA:V.

I'll second setting a budget then researching a few cards to see which edges out FTW. While I'd like a new card, I know I don't NEED it. The 980 is still a beefy card today as long as you're realistic. While your GPU is due for an upgrade, what is your HDD? That is another worthwhile area to look at upgrading if you haven't already.

Yeah, I can still play MC, even heavily modded on my 660 (though it can get tight at times and I can't have render distance to max) and it actually plays Fallout 4 very OK at lower settings (which is the main game I play, though I have seen a few more that interest me and are a little more intensive) its still not a bad card, hella lot better than an integrated GPU - it has actually aged extremely well.

I'm looking seriously at the AMD 570/580 in 8gb flavor just because I do some game development now and then and need that VRAM overhead and it's certainly not going to hurt performance when gaming. I'm watching prices and trying to snag one around $100, which is semi-common on eBay.

I'm not even 100% sure what HDD is in this machine, its a 2tb that shows up as a HUA723020ALA640 (though I have several more 2GB drives in my now-dead AMD media server I plan to move over) I know I need to upgrade to an SSD it just for some reason is never on my mind when I'm checking prices on things... (though alternatively, as I mentioned in another thread, I am looking at upgrading my ram and making a RAMDisk which is even faster than an SSD, but with a lot of drawbacks, so.... yeah...)

pre-post-edit:
I actually looked up the HDD, its HGST - a company that is under WD so its not bad and it IS actually 7200rpm which kinda surprised me:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145476
 
An ssd will make it feel like a brand new pc! Even a sata one will be incredibly fast compared to a mechanical drive. Seriously consider adding one to your upgrade plans.
 
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