For $200 can I do any better than dual 660ti s?

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LGabrielPhoto

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I think for 200 the performance is great but I'm not in the loop with current gps so wanted to check.
Please no need to bring up sli "issues" as for me they worked fine before even in tri sli.
I plan to go for into gaming with oculus rift when our finally Colfax out.
Just trying to figure out the performance for the money.
 
Rumors are saying the GeForce 960 is going to launch this month, and it may have performance equivalent to that setup. Price could be in the $200-$250 range.

If you have the 660 SLI setup right now, I'd say hold off on an upgrade until those are out.

If you don't have the SLI setup right now, I'd say hold off on a purchase until they're out.
 
Oculus Rift will likely have a 4k display when the retail version is out.

Probably best to just wait on whatever GPUs are here at that time.
 
There is nothing that beats your setup out right now for the price you're looking at. Rumors have it that the GTX 960 is looking to be equal to the GTX 680/770 and even that isn't faster. It takes multiple generations for a card to double performance at the same price you bought the previous card, let alone SLI.
 
I remember reading the 192bit bandwidth becomes an issue with SLI. If you are talking Nvida only then there probably isn't anything better in that price range. If you included AMD I have seen used 7950s for the $100 to $110 range each. That would be better I believe.
 
OP.. no, nothing in the market right now can surpass the performance of those cards in SLI at that price.. a used gtx 780 would be a little better in some case.. sidegrade in others.. my 780 actually perform just a little better than my overclocked 660TI SLI setup (both EVGA FTW signature 2 models at 1372mhz) in other cases its just equal..


Ieat said:
I remember reading the 192bit bandwidth becomes an issue with SLI..
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This its very incorrect.. a complete FAKE..


Ieat said:
If you are talking Nvida only then there probably isn't anything better in that price range. If you included AMD I have seen used 7950s for the $100 to $110 range each. That would be better I believe.
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7950s Xfire are at most a sidegrade to 660TI SLI.. and the OP want a single card with similar performance of the 660TI in SLI..
 
I had tri sli 660 before and they were great . Then I sold them as I needed cash. So now I was going to get them again and can get two 660ti 2GB for 200$ .
I prefer Nvidia for 3d vision as well.
Thanks guys
 
shaolin95 said:
I had tri sli 660 before and they were great . Then I sold them as I needed cash. So now I was going to get them again and can get two 660ti 2GB for 200$ .
I prefer Nvidia for 3d vision as well.
Thanks guys
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that wouldn't be advisable at this point of the road... those cards are basically 1.5gb vRAM.. anything that can use above that will hurt the performance.. and for today gaming standards 2GB are a complete bottleneck.. you will have a lot of processing power but limited Antialiasing performance due to the tiny bus, and pretty limited vRAM.. that was the main reason I changed the 660TI SLI setup.. I was tired of cut the AA to have decent performance.. or being limited to 1.50gb of VRAM causing a lot of Stuttering flushing the vRAM every moment it pass from that amount.. check for a used GTX 780 and you will be better really..
 
Araxie said:
OP.. no, nothing in the market right now can surpass the performance of those cards in SLI at that price.. a used gtx 780 would be a little better in some case.. sidegrade in others.. my 780 actually perform just a little better than my overclocked 660TI SLI setup (both EVGA FTW signature 2 models at 1372mhz) in other cases its just equal..




This its very incorrect.. a complete FAKE..




7950s Xfire are at most a sidegrade to 660TI SLI.. and the OP want a single card with similar performance of the 660TI in SLI..
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I guess it depends on resolution.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_radeon_hd_7870_myst_edition_crossfire/4.htm

But no NOT complete FAKE as you see the 660ti sli fall well behind 7870 Myst cards at triple monitor resolution. And no where in his post did he mention a single card.
 
you could also look for two 760's around that price range as well. I had a strict sub-200 budget left for a poor friend for a gpu and was up between two 760's and a 770. I went with the 770 since I want this system to last for him (so he can pick up another 770 for even cheaper a few years later) - and also because the seller responded sooner
 
Exyia said:
you could also look for two 760's around that price range as well. I had a strict sub-200 budget left for a poor friend for a gpu and was up between two 760's and a 770. I went with the 770 since I want this system to last for him (so he can pick up another 770 for even cheaper a few years later) - and also because the seller responded sooner
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The 760 is essentially a carbon copy of the 660 Ti with a name change.
 
Ieat said:
I guess it depends on resolution.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_radeon_hd_7870_myst_edition_crossfire/4.htm

But no NOT complete FAKE as you see the 660ti sli fall well behind 7870 Myst cards at triple monitor resolution. And no where in his post did he mention a single card.
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in all of those benchmarks its a combination of many things.. the first of all the AntiAlias which its the main bottleneck of a 660TI, second more ROPS, third Bandwidth and second vRAM.. and thats why the 660TI its so sensitive to memory Overclock.... the 192bit bus its a bottleneck yes (and I always say thats true) but not for SLI as you said in your previous post.. it will not limit the performance of SLI its just a lack of Bandwidth and the asynchronous memory controller which if the card go beyond 1.5gb will work at 64bit dropping off the performance of the cards.. and MSAA + Multi monitor setup will easily go beyond that.. and thats a issue of the 2GB card only.. but again the 192bit bus isn't a bottleneck for SLI as you said.

Liger88 said:
The 760 is essentially a carbon copy of the 660 Ti with a name change.
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you mean carbon copy of the 660 not TI.. the 760 its yes, a 660 with 256bit bus.. the 660TI still have more Shaders than the 760..
 
skiddierow said:
Oculus Rift will likely have a 4k display when the retail version is out.

Probably best to just wait on whatever GPUs are here at that time.
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No chance in hell - Oculus is owned by FB and they'd want to target the average consumer because they want money. Only freak-enthusiasts can power anything adequately at 4k, even 3 years from now. A 4k-variant may be a possibility but no way it'll be the standard.
 
Araxie said:
you mean carbon copy of the 660 not TI.. the 760 its yes, a 660 with 256bit bus.. the 660TI still have more Shaders than the 760..
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I was referring to performance actually, but I got that confused with the GTX 670, so disregard lol. Still wouldn't consider that a considerable candidate from 2 x 660 Ti's for $200 unless you buy used.
 
Liger88 said:
I was referring to performance actually, but I got that confused with the GTX 670, so disregard lol. Still wouldn't consider that a considerable candidate from 2 x 660 Ti's for $200 unless you buy used.
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well thats a total different thing.. yes in performance actually they are pretty similar. the 760 its still better than the 660TI and worse than the 670.. so they are kinda similar but still a worthless point in this landscape even for 200$..
 
Araxie said:
that wouldn't be advisable at this point of the road... those cards are basically 1.5gb vRAM.. anything that can use above that will hurt the performance.. and for today gaming standards 2GB are a complete bottleneck.. you will have a lot of processing power but limited Antialiasing performance due to the tiny bus, and pretty limited vRAM.. that was the main reason I changed the 660TI SLI setup.. I was tired of cut the AA to have decent performance.. or being limited to 1.50gb of VRAM causing a lot of Stuttering flushing the vRAM every moment it pass from that amount.. check for a used GTX 780 and you will be better really..
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You have been saying that for years and its NEVER been proven at all though. I had a gtx560 SE with 192 bit bus and it used over 768mb in practically everything and it scaled perfectly fine with no stuttering just from exceeding 768 mb. I also had a gtx660ti and nothing out of the ordinary happened when going over 1.5 gb and again it scaled just fine too. In fact when Toms compared the 2gb 660 ti to the 3gb model which does not have mixed memory, the 3gb was actually slightly slower in a game.
 
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Since you don't have any card at the moment, I'd get the fastest single card you can currently purchase and add a second one down the line.
 
Parja said:
Since you don't have any card at the moment, I'd get the fastest single card you can currently purchase and add a second one down the line.
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The problem as usual is that when that time comes I will be told to sell that card and then buy the best single one again and add one later. The story will repeat over and over :D
 
Well, if you don't want to do that, you could always sell your PC and buy a PS4? Then you won't have to upgrade the video card.
 
deruberhanyok said:
Well, if you don't want to do that, you could always sell your PC and buy a PS4? Then you won't have to upgrade the video card.
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really man, come on now...I will restrain myself from telling what such comment deserve so drop it. My first computer was a C64 so lets keep this like adults.
 
I am not usually a fan of the whole "get one now and buy another later" thing; I am more a "Buy two now and buy nothing later" or "Buy one now and upgrade it later" guy.
 
chenw said:
I am not usually a fan of the whole "get one now and buy another later" thing; I am more a "Buy two now and buy nothing later" or "Buy one now and upgrade it later" guy.
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I will likely wait for the new gen thinking things again since I have no hurry really until Oculus comes out.
Thanks for the input guys.
 
misterbobby said:
You have been saying that for years and its NEVER been proven at all though. I had a gtx560 SE with 192 bit bus and it used over 768mb in practically everything and it scaled perfectly fine with no stuttering just from exceeding 768 mb. I also had a gtx660ti and nothing out of the ordinary happened when going over 1.5 gb and again it scaled just fine too. In fact when Toms compared the 2gb 660 ti to the 3gb model which does not have mixed memory, the 3gb was actually slightly slower in a game.
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different times and different cards.. try to play any actual vRAM sensitive game with a 660TI 2GB vs a 3GB version and you will notice how bad can perform the 2GB specially when the card are forced to use A LOT of vRAM, the engineering in the 660TI its actually very good enough to keep the card flushing constantly, refreshing textures every second.. but when you push more textures than the card its able to refresh its where the problems begins, a modded skyrim can perform night/day different with a 660TI 2GB and a 3GB version.. Bioshock infinite which its known for use as much vRAM as possible even if aren't using it more than just buffer its a serious problem with frametimes even when you have constant 60FPS.. and more even yet when its in SLI configuration having all of those power very limited by the memory.. as you can easy have the power to crank AA settings until it become a vRAM limited and the card have to flush constantly.. a good example of this its BF4 or Metro 2033 with 4xMSAA.. i don't need a benchmark showing numbers when I can see the mess of the frametimes.. and you may remember how much I defended the 660TI SLI setup I had.. I know how good and how bad its that setup..
 
shaolin95 said:
really man, come on now...I will restrain myself from telling what such comment deserve so drop it. My first computer was a C64 so lets keep this like adults.
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It appears you missed the sarcasm there. I'll try to be more obvious next time.
 
chenw said:
I am not usually a fan of the whole "get one now and buy another later" thing; I am more a "Buy two now and buy nothing later" or "Buy one now and upgrade it later" guy.
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Thats a horrible way to manage GPUs. You are paying 2x more money using 2x the power and generating tons more heat for at best 50% increase in performance. You are almost always better off going with the best single card your budget allows unless you have a very high budget.

Your buy 2 now mentality completely kills your upgrade path later.
 
Thats because the resolution and FPS I am aiming for, 1 card isn't enough (1440p@120fps), the 50% of the two 970's is a bigger priority than the heat or power consumption.

Besides to me, the "Buy now and get 1 more later" isn't a whole lot better than "Buy 1 now and upgrade it later".

But that's me, I don't even think about second hand cards, and I don't do cards that are over a year old (chances are there are better cards out there at that stage, and I have no way of knowing how long the card had been sitting on the shelf). I also don't really do incremental upgrades every year, I tend to save money for several, get the best value for what is available with the budget, then leave it for several more.

Under more normal circumstances I would agree that 1 card is better than 2 cards (less issues to play around with).
 
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chenw said:
I am not usually a fan of the whole "get one now and buy another later" thing; I am more a "Buy two now and buy nothing later" or "Buy one now and upgrade it later" guy.
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I agree with this.

The same people who told you to replace your old-ish card instead of twinning it, with the added argument of twinning the new card instead down the line, will tell you to get rid of said new card when that down the line actually comes.

Get what you need now, or don't. Looking too far ahead doesn't work out as often as you'd like.
 
chenw said:
Thats because the resolution and FPS I am aiming for, 1 card isn't enough (1440p@120fps), the 50% of the two 970's is a bigger priority than the heat or power consumption.

Besides to me, the "Buy now and get 1 more later" isn't a whole lot better than "Buy 1 now and upgrade it later".

But that's me, I don't even think about second hand cards, and I don't do cards that are over a year old (chances are there are better cards out there at that stage, and I have no way of knowing how long the card had been sitting on the shelf). I also don't really do incremental upgrades every year, I tend to save money for several, get the best value for what is available with the budget, then leave it for several more.

Under more normal circumstances I would agree that 1 card is better than 2 cards (less issues to play around with).
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Thats all fine and good for large budget builds but typically most people will not have $1k to burn on just GPUs. And if you are not dropping a ton of cash on GPUs dual card config right off the bat is a bad idea like i said. Considering the OP is looking for an upgrade at $200 its pretty hard to make the argument that buying dual GPUs is better.
 
noobthegreat said:
I agree with this.

The same people who told you to replace your old-ish card instead of twinning it, with the added argument of twinning the new card instead down the line, will tell you to get rid of said new card when that down the line actually comes.

Get what you need now, or don't. Looking too far ahead doesn't work out as often as you'd like.
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Looking at your sig makes me cringe. You went crossfire with mid range cards when you could have spent the same amount of cash and got better performance with a single card. You made a poor decision for yourself dont try and give that same awful advice to others.

Going crossfire or SLI right off the bat with mid range cards is STUPID. The only real benefit to going dual GPU with mid range is an upgrade path later.
 
Disposed said:
Looking at your sig makes me cringe. You went crossfire with mid range cards when you could have spent the same amount of cash and got better performance with a single card. You made a poor decision for yourself dont try and give that same awful advice to others.

Going crossfire or SLI right off the bat with mid range cards is STUPID. The only real benefit to going dual GPU with mid range is an upgrade path later.
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When I went for 2xGTX660 instead of 1xGTX680 I made the best decision possible. The two 660s trashed the 680 outright. And I could get 2x660 for the price of a 670, which was nowhere near the performance of the SLI setup.

But to answer the OP, this was a while ago, now I wouldn't buy SLI mid range, because they only have 2 gigs of ram, which won't be enough for current gen games, even in 1080p, not to mention higher resolutions. I'd get the best 4G card that money can buy.
 
M76 said:
But to answer the OP, this was a while ago, now I wouldn't buy SLI mid range, because they only have 2 gigs of ram, which won't be enough for current gen games, even in 1080p, not to mention higher resolutions. I'd get the best 4G card that money can buy.
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Yup, the game has changed significantly in the past year with developers getting incredibly lazy with regard to video memory usage. Amount of memory has become a much higher priority for gaming. At this point, to game at even 1080p, I wouldn't consider anything under 3GB and would strongly recommend 4GB as a minimum.
 
M76 said:
When I went for 2xGTX660 instead of 1xGTX680 I made the best decision possible. The two 660s trashed the 680 outright. And I could get 2x660 for the price of a 670, which was nowhere near the performance of the SLI setup.

But to answer the OP, this was a while ago, now I wouldn't buy SLI mid range, because they only have 2 gigs of ram, which won't be enough for current gen games, even in 1080p, not to mention higher resolutions. I'd get the best 4G card that money can buy.
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Thats a very different scenario then what we have today. The problem was the 680 was insanely overpriced and the 660s ended up being bad ass bang/buck cards.

You NEED 3GB+ Vram and going SLI with 2GB cards is seriously crippling. You can make all the arguments you want but try your 2GB dual card configs with triple monitors or 1440P and you'll see just how crippled you are.

What would be nice is if they would work on advancing the technology to the point where both cards can utilize the Vram. But frankly i dont know if thats even possible. Sure would be nice to have dual 4GB cards giving 8GB of usable Vram though. Would make SLI/Xfire much more viable.

EDIT: for clarification i do have you quoted but i am not disagreeing. Just agreeing and adding my 2 cents.
 
Disposed said:
Looking at your sig makes me cringe. You went crossfire with mid range cards when you could have spent the same amount of cash and got better performance with a single card. You made a poor decision for yourself dont try and give that same awful advice to others.

Going crossfire or SLI right off the bat with mid range cards is STUPID. The only real benefit to going dual GPU with mid range is an upgrade path later.
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For your information, these two were gotten at a time when the "same amount of cash" would have gotten me jack shit thanks to the mining craze. Nvidia and AMD were both price gouged to the hilt. But this was never about my rig.

My point was that you get what you need when you need it because it's always going to be a different game at different times. It was also that the whole "get another one down the line" shouldn't factor into your decision.

It is a bad idea to get two cards at once; never in my post history have I ever told anyone to get two cards from the beginning when one can be had-- most of the time I'm telling them the same thing everyone else repeats here anyway.

EDIT: My fault for making a general statement that wasn't directed at the OP. As for the OP's case, unlike myself who plays at 1080p, the memory consideration is the clincher -- don't get 2GB at 1440p, much less on the asymmetrical memory setup the 660 has. Replace the card at some point.
 
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