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Asus GTX 660Ti Direct CU II TOP review

Sumon Pathak

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Introduction
So i was thinking about doing a review on my HD7850 but i guess the hardware gods have something else in their mind.So,one fine day i find a nice big parcel in my doorstep. Presenting the GTX 660Ti :the new card based on GK104 chip from Nvidia.

Now, before i dive into benchmarks and stuff let’s have a look at the thing we have in hand. The card we would be reviewing is the Direct CU II TOP version from Asus; currently the most aggressively binned card in the market.

Let’s have a look at the specs to start things off:

 

Graphics Engine NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Bus Standard PCI Express 3.0
Video Memory GDDR5 2GB
CUDA Core 1344
Shader Clock GPU Boost Clock : 1137 MHz
GPU Base Clock : 1059 MHz
Memory Clock 6008 MHz (1502 MHz GDDR5)
Memory Interface 192-bit
Resolution DVI Max Resolution : 2560×1600
Interface DVI Output : Yes x 1 (DVI-I), Yes x 1 (DVI-D)
HDMI Output : Yes x 1
Display Port : Yes x 1 (Regular DP)
HDCP Support : Yes
Dimensions 10.7 ” x 5.4 ” x 1.7 ” Inch

 

The main Difference between the reference 660TI and this card is that this card is clocked around 150Mhz higher than the reference version with a better cooler.

A short introduction to Kepler

Kepler is the newest GPU architecture from Nvidia and packs some nifty features. It’s vastly different from the last generation of chips from Nvidia in many ways. The foremost thing that’s comes into light is that Nvidia made is a tradeoff between clock speed and core counts that all CPU and GPU makers are wrestling with every day. Power consumption rises with the clock speed, so reducing the frequency can lower the power consumption. And the second big change is a shrink in the die from 40nm to 28nm so we can expect lower power consumption and temps. There are two different Kepler GPUs in development. The Kepler1 chip, also known as GK104, is aimed at Enthusiast graphics cards and Tesla GPU coprocessors, where single-precision floating point math is most important. Nvidia has not said much about the Kepler2 GPUs – also known as GK110 internally – except that they will be tuned for double-precision floating point math and will support more GDDR5 memory, will have different packaging aimed at servers, and will cost more money than Tesla cards based on the Kepler1 units. And we may see some Gaming cards based on that card(rumors of course).
Now back to the Kepler architecture here is a die shot and a block diagram of the die for the interested persons :

Nvidia Kepler Die shot:

Nvidia Kepler block diagram
Now if we go back in time…and take a look at Fermi architecture we will see that The Fermi GPU had 512 cores, and grouped 32 cores into something called a streaming multiprocessor, or SM. The SM had 64KB of L1 cache and a 768KB L2 cache shared across the multiple SMs. The Fermis were the first GPUs that had cache memory,making the SMs look a lot more like standard CPUs in terms of their memory hierarchy. A Fermi GPU had 16 of these SMs and either 3GB or 6GB of GDDR5 memory that they all shared.The initial Fermis only shipped with 448 cores activated in the top-end models, but as yields improved at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp on its 40 nanometer process, Nvidia was able to ship chips with all 512 cores running.The Fermis burned between 225 watts and 250 watts in a discrete graphics card and Tesla coprocessor cards; they originally ran at 1.15GHz with the 448 core version and were boosted to 1.3GHz with the 512 core variant. Now with the Kepler architecture Nvidia moved into something called SMX(streaming multiprocessor extreme architecture) :

SM vs SMX Architecture Nvidia is putting 192 cores into a streaming multiprocessor group with slightly modified CUDA cores. Eight of these SMX units are on a single GPU chip for a total of 1,536 cores.(normally). So basically we have a 3X power performance ratio increase on paper. Here’s some prediction slides made by Nvidia:

So there goes some of features of the new architecture.Lets focus on the card itself..shall we?



Up Close with the card

Not much to say here,let the pictures do the talking;i will fill in the details.

It comes in the standard CU II Version box with scratches and all,the one i have has been reinforced.

Inside the box we have the custom black cardboard box by Asus which in itself looks pretty cool and classy.And yes the kiddy eraser has a huge importance in this writeup.

Front view of the card :

Back view of the card :

The display connectors:

The card uses 2 six pin power connectors so make sure you have enough power.

Showcase continues

The SLI connectors:

Power LED’s One of the cool features that i liked..they light up according to the state of power;Green for all systems go Red if there is some problems. here’s how the work if everything is all right:

A few more pics before we dive into performance info.


Test Setups and results

The test setup :

 

CPU Core i5 2500K
Motherboard P8Z68 Deluxe
GPU Asus GTX 660Ti Direct CU II TOP(driver version 306.04)
Ram Gskill Ripjaws X 1600 Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T
PSU Corsair AX 1200W

 

So lets carry on to the benchmarks..shall we?

First up some Synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Suite and UNIGINE HEAVEN benchmark.

3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation (formerly MadOnion.com and initially Futuremark) to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities.The higher the score the better the system. As each 3DMark is based on a specific version of the DirectX API scores cannot be compared across the different releases.

Since am an overclocker i was interested to see how much gain is seen in benchmarking suites.Overall the scores are pretty healthy.

UNIGINE HEAVEN benchmark

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced UNIGINE™ engine. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. It is the first DirectX 11 benchmark in the world, the original version was released at the moment of Microsoft Windows 7 launch in October, 2009. the version we are using is used in HWBOT.


More Results

Next up the game benchmarks..

Crysis 1 and 2

Crysis is a FPS series developed by German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. The series revolves around a group of military protagonists with “nanosuits,” technologically advanced suits of armor that allow them to gain enhanced physical strength, speed, defense, and cloaking abilities. The protagonists face off against hostile North Korean soldiers, heavily-armed mercenaries, and a race of technologically advanced aliens known as the Ceph, who arrived on Earth millions of years ago for unclear reasons, and have recently been awakened. the game uses “cryEngine” which very demanding on the GPU and had made itself an benchmark from the time of its release.

Setting:maximum playable setting with 4x AA.
Maps: Island for Crysis and Times Square for Crysis 2.

DiRT 3

DiRT 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters based on the EGO 2.0 engine.The Ego engine was developed to render more detailed damage and physics as well as render large-scale environments.

Setting: maximum playable setting with 4X AA.
Map: Aspen

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter video game with survival horror elements, based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game uses 4A Engine which supports Direct3D APIs 9, 10, and 11, along with NVidia’s PhysX and also NVidia’s 3D Vision.

Setting: maximum playable setting with 4X MSAA.
Map: Frontline (in game benchmark)

Sniper Elite V2

Sniper Elite V2 is a 2012 tactical shooter video game developed by Rebellion Developments.It’s a remake of Rebellion’s 2005 game Sniper Elite. The game takes place in the same timeframe and location—the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. The game uses the ASURA engine

For benchmarking we used the benchmarking demo released by rebellion.

Setting:All maxed out.
Map:Kaiser-Friedrich Museum(part of it)

The reason for the detailed graph is that i wanted to show the effect of “Super Sampling” on present generation cards.As its evident that even a card like GTX 660ti will bow down to the effect of Super Sampling.

Next up is a mix of 3 games and demo’s:

Stalker:Call of Pripyat

PLA game benchmark based on Unreal 3 Engine

Battlefield 3

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is an open world first-person shooter video game based on the X-Ray Engine.The X-Ray Engine is a game engine, supporting DirectX 8.1/9.0c/10/10.1/11 and Shader Model 5.0. Up to a million polygons can be on-screen at any one time. The engine features HDR rendering, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, widescreen support, weather effects and day/night cycles. As with other engines that utilize deferred shading, the X-Ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing and motion blur with enhanced dynamic lighting modes enabled. However, a “fake” form of anti-aliasing can be enabled with the static lighting option; this format utilizes a technique to blur the image to give the false impression of anti-aliasing.
PLA game benchmark is based on a game named Passion Leads Army using the Unreal 3 Engine. The third and current generation of the Unreal Engine (UE3) is designed for DirectX (versions 9-11 for Windows and Xbox 360), as well as systems using OpenGL, including the PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Stage 3D for Adobe Flash Player 11, PlayStation Vita and Wii U[10]. Its renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows.
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. It is a direct sequel to 2005’s Battlefield 2, and the twelfth installment in the Battlefield franchise. The game uses Frostbite 2 which is the next generation of Frostbite Engine. It takes full advantage of the DirectX 11 API and 64-bit processors,with no support for DirectX 9 so NO XP.It also features enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0[citation needed], creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geomerics’ Enlighten technology.

So that takes care of the benchmarks part.From a gamers point of view its a very good card and a strong response from the GREEN side to the RED league.

So,its time for the final verdict…

In one hand we have Nvidia’s latest Keplar GPU on the other hand you have Asus’s perfect engineering so with the mix of that we have a perfect gaming GPU.

Pro’s:

Con’s:

From this review onwards we are adopting to an award system for rating all the products that we are reviewing.So expect a rating in every hardware review we do from now on.
Am very happy to announce that the GTX 660Ti Direct CU II TOP version gets a 5 Star rating from the ocfreaks team after seeing its performance all across the board.

In the end i want to thank a few people for making this review possible:

So…that’s all for today…time for some BF3 fragging for me.
signing out…
Sumon Pathak

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