GeForce GTX 660 Ti Review: Nvidia’s Trickle-Down Keplernomics

More than four months have passed since Nvidia’s Kepler architecture was introduced in GeForce GTX 680 (check out GeForce GTX 680 2 GB Review: Kepler Sends Tahiti On Vacation for more information on the design itself). In the five months since, we’ve seen Nvidia fill up the high-end space with its GeForce GTX 670 and GeForce GTX 690. However, GeForce GT 640 remains the only mainstream board with Kepler’s DNA in it. That leaves an almost-$300 range currently filled with older Fermi-based models, such as GeForce GTX 560, 570, and 580. No doubt, newer and more efficient Kepler-derived silicon will take the place of those cards, bringing us today’s GeForce GTX 660 Ti launch.

It’s common to see the same piece of silicon nipped and tucked to create products aimed at different price points. Companies like AMD and Nvidia play with clock rates, alter memory interfaces, and turn pieces of their GPUs on or off. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti employs the same GK104 processor as GeForce GTX 670. However, Nvidia cuts the card’s memory bus down from 256- to 192-bits and removes one of the GPU’s four render back-end clusters, leaving everything else intact.

We might have expected Nvidia to detune more of its GK104. However, GeForce GTX 660 Ti employs the same core and memory clocks as GeForce GTX 670. That is to say, like the 670, this new board features seven functional SMX blocks. Consequently, GeForce GTX 660 Ti comes equipped with 1344 CUDA cores and 112 texture units. Each of its three remaining ROP clusters output up to eight 32-bit pixels, totaling 24 pixels per clock. Moreover, three 64-bit memory interfaces aggregate to 192 bits. We expect to see GeForce GTX 660 Ti perform on-par with GTX 670 in compute-oriented apps, but not as well in games.

Beyond its general specifications, GeForce GTX 660 Ti offers the same GPU Boost functionality found on the GTX 670 and 680 cards, support for up to four displays, and TXAA in games that support the feature. Although those two higher-end boards support four-way SLI configurations, Nvidia cuts GeForce GTX 660 Ti back to a maximum of three cards, which is actually something we haven’t seen from the company before. Typically, at this price point, we’d expect a two-card maximum.