660ti 2gb essentially 1.5gb?

[Keysplayr]

No taking up on the challenge then? 🙁 Perhaps a couple beers would've made it fun for you to find at least 2-3 sources to counter-act this! It's your job after all! Ha ha (evil laughter)! 😀

(Don't worry amenx, it's not authoritative enough to make me rate GTX 660 Ti less than HD 7870, ha! I kid like a fool!)

No. It isn't my job. Go scratch.

 

[Keysplayr]

If this were the case, with Titan being 384 memory bus, would it use all of the 6 gigs of Vram? I have yet to see my 660ti's go over 1450 vram on my 2560X1600 display. Playing games like the Witcher 2 and Skyrim just does not eat up the Vram that people say it does, but then again I don't mod games or care to. 😀

The GTX Titan has six memory controllers (6x1024MB) = 6144 MB of GDDR5 memory.
1 GB per 64bit controller. 2GB per 128bit of the bus X 3.

 

[notty22]

No taking up on the challenge then? 🙁 Perhaps a couple beers would've made it fun for you to find at least 2-3 sources to counter-act this! It's your job after all! Ha ha (evil laughter)! 😀

(Don't worry amenx, it's not authoritative enough to make me rate GTX 660 Ti less than HD 7870, ha! I kid like a fool!)

You have been doing alot of hinting🙂 like this about your ratings.

 

[BoFox]

I just wanted a fun jest with Keysplayr!

He ain't giving it to me, argh! It's his job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

😀 😛

P.S. - Keysplayr, if you don't do it, I'll report you to Nvidia's HQ that you ain't doing your job, and get you fired! Muahahahahaha!!!! :twisted:

(But don't worry - if you do it, you'll win, and I'll lose - I promise you that!) ()🙂

 

[FalseChristian]

That's the problem with the GeForce TITAN. You're paying $1000 because it has 3 GB of VRAM you don't need and won't ever use. The damn thing would only cost $800 if it had the proper amount-3GB.

 

[Keysplayr]

I just wanted a fun jest with Keysplayr!

He ain't giving it to me, argh! It's his job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

😀 😛

P.S. - Keysplayr, if you don't do it, I'll report you to Nvidia's HQ that you ain't doing your job, and get you fired! Muahahahahaha!!!! :twisted:

(But don't worry - if you do it, you'll win, and I'll lose - I promise you that!) ()🙂

I can never tell with you BoFox. You keep me guessing.

 

[exar333]

That's the problem with the GeForce TITAN. You're paying $1000 because it has 3 GB of VRAM you don't need and won't ever use. The damn thing would only cost $800 if it had the proper amount-3GB.

I'm maxing at 2GB on just 3x1200P on Skyrim with some mods (not a lot) and AA turned down a bit. Move to max AA, bigger displays, and more mods and you could easily hit 4BG+. These are not for a guy using a single 1080P display on a console port...

 

[lamedude]

The GTX Titan has six memory controllers (6x1024MB) = 6144 MB of GDDR5 memory.
1 GB per 64bit controller. 2GB per 128bit of the bus X 3.

Just want to point out that GDDR5 only comes in 4Gb densities (Hynix and Elpida only have 2Gb) so its more like 6x512x2. Also interesting is it available in 1750MHZ/7Gbps. Getting the memory controller past 6GHZ must be really hard.

 

[crisium]

I remember Tom's HW did a review of multiple 660Ti and the 3GB variant actually performed worse than the 2GB cards. They wondered if a 1.5GB 660Ti might actually be faster than the 2GB cards, if it existed.

 

[BoFox]

Perhaps it's a built-in architecture limitation for GTX 660 Ti chips that forces it to behave like as if it has only 2GB of memory, in that it's just "retarded" from using a straight, orthogonal memory configuration.

After all, Toms said this:

So far, it looks like 3 GB of GDDR5 are too much for the 192-bit interface to handle efficiently.

One such shortcoming is that Toms failed to actually demonstrate a game using more than 1.5GB of VRAM.

Both GTX 670 and 660 Ti drop off sharply with 8x AA.

Both still drop off just as much as each other - showing the same behavior while HD 7870 continues unabated with 8xAA, thereby suggesting no VRAM limitations at 2GB. What Toms does not show is if the game is using more than 1.5GB or not, but it is probably not the case or else GTX 660 Ti 2GB would probably have dropped more sharply than GTX 670.

 

[Midwayman]

That's the problem with the GeForce TITAN. You're paying $1000 because it has 3 GB of VRAM you don't need and won't ever use. The damn thing would only cost $800 if it had the proper amount-3GB.

For gaming maybe. You have to remember this is a card aimed more at a compute market than just gamers. Maybe folks using gpu compute have use for large amounts of vram?

 

[amenx]

Both still drop off just as much as each other - showing the same behavior while HD 7870 continues unabated with 8xAA, thereby suggesting no VRAM limitations at 2GB. What Toms does not show is if the game is using more than 1.5GB or not, but it is probably not the case or else GTX 660 Ti 2GB would probably have dropped more sharply than GTX 670.

Toms only used a single game to demonstrate that point. The 660ti may be slightly handicapped at high AA (8x) and very high res, but many people are perfectly content with 4x or less. And at 1920x1080 its even less of an issue. Anandtechs review shows differently vs Toms at 4xAA. Which I believe is mostly repeated similarly in other reviews.

And holy smokes! In BF3 at 2560x1600:

Look at the distance between it and the 7870.

 

[Bull Dog]

Amenx you are aware that AMD's BF3 performance has improved considerably since those graphs were made right?

 

[wand3r3r]

Toms only used a single game to demonstrate that point. The 660ti may be slightly handicapped at high AA (8x) and very high res, but many people are perfectly content with 4x or less. And at 1920x1080 its even less of an issue. Anandtechs review shows differently vs Toms at 4xAA. Which I believe is mostly repeated similarly in other reviews.

And holy smokes! In BF3 at 2560x1600:

Look at the distance between it and the 7870.

Nice outdated charts. Useful only for comparing vs. similar NV models.

 

[amenx]

Nice outdated charts. Useful only for comparing vs. similar NV models.

Fair enough, but we certainly werent comparing AMDs performance at launch either, it was a good 8 months after launch, and as AT states with the 12.11 driver release:

At 1920x1200 we’re seeing a roughly 5% across the board performance improvement for both the 7970 and the 7950...

Meanwhile like most major performance drivers, even when performance is up across the board the biggest gains are seen in a handful of games, and Catalyst 12.11 is no exception. Among the games in our test suite, DiRT 3, Shogun 2, and Battlefield 3 see the greatest improvements, with the former two picking up 6-7% each.

But it’s Battlefield 3 that really takes the cake: the performance improvement from Catalyst 12.11 ranges from 13% for the 7770 at 1680 to a whopping 29% for the 7970 at 1920. This makes Catalyst 12.11 a very special driver for AMD – not only are performance improvements over 20% particularly rare, but Battlefield 3 has long been a thorn in AMD’s side.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

TBH, I had no idea BF3 was that big of a jump for AMD with the driver release, so kudos to them for that.

Then there was bofox main assertion that I was replying to which concerned the 7870 vs 660ti. The driver improvements with the 7870 were not as spectacular as the 7970/7950, although still significant enough. Yet its still about on par with the 660, not 660ti here. Although the 660ti is not listed, we can safely assume its performance is between the 670 and 660.

Then, here is a recent review (for Titan) with these cards listed, and see how they compare. Bear in mind they may not be at same settings as other reviews:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/02/21/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-6gb-review/3

So as we can see bofox's contention that the 660ti is inferior to the 7870 due to its memory subsystem or bandwidth limitations was simply off the mark.

 

[BoFox]

So as we can see bofox's contention that the 660ti is inferior to the 7870 due to its memory subsystem or bandwidth limitations was simply off the mark.

Only a tunnel-vision cynical mindset would contend this to be a contention of mine. 😛

Of course, I know that it's only ONE game that Tomshardware tested. I should have criticized Toms for not testing it with more games as well.

 

[BoFox]

A good place to test between 1.5GB and 2GB on the 660 Ti (to see if the 2GB version really suffers at all vs 3GB version) would be with Crysis 3 at 2560x1600 with 4x SMAA -

see how much memory these cards used at those settings:

http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/crysis-3-test-gpu/graficheskaya-chast.html

BTW, I find it a bit interesting that NV didn't do a "straight" 1.5GB version of either 660Ti or 660.

 

[lopri]

If you happen to use Opera browser, you can try this:

http://techdows.com/2012/06/turn-on-hardware-acceleration-and-webgl-in-opera-12.html

Every tab loads into video memory instead of system memory, and you can easily see it in GPU-Z (or inevitable crash ^^) Great way (albeit buggy and inefficient) to free up system memory. I torture my 7950's 3GB that way. It's also excellent stability testing for overclock because even if cores are not stressed it will catch errors.

 

[amenx]

Using OCCT GPU test with error checking option and amount of memory to use.

I've seen in other forums some 660ti users reporting 1800mb mem usage in Skyrim or some other game I believe.

 

[notty22]

I just ran that OCCT test on a 660 last night myself.

 

[BoFox]

Question is: Does it use the 512MB in between 1.5GB and 2GB efficiently without severe slow-downs, in games?

 

[skipsneeky2]

I think with the 970 having the same issues with memory,this is worth bringing up again.

Also many games today can push vram usage without costing much performance,usually textures can be Very High or Ultra and easily hit over 2gb in many games and as long as other demanding settings are lowered even a 660 can hold up.

I got this gtx660 non ti 2gb,it won't push past 1.5gb for nothing in 2015's GTA V even at 1440p with the Very High Texture settings and the game claims i should be using 1991mb with my settings.Performance is fine usually outside of when vram hits slightly over 1.5gb when performance gets erratic....

 

[Zodiark1593]

Well, previous comments show the 660 (and earlier, the 550 TI) got the same level of hate as the 960 does nowadays. Just thought I'd point that out. Seems Nvidia always had an issue with price/performance in the $140-$200 area.

Are there any recebt tests of attempting to stress the memory subsystem of the 660 and finding out what impact using it's last 500MB does to performance? How many chips were physically on the board?

To the person above:

The penalty of going past memory limits to a degree doesn't seem to be based in memory bandwidth alone(otherwise performance would be more consistently slow) but rather latency, the time it takes for texture data to be pulled from main memory. When texture data needs to be pulled, there is a substantial amount of time the gpu needs to wait to get it. Hence the hitching, heavy stutters and craptastic minimums rather than slow average framerate.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Something is up with the 660Ti. Compared to a 2GB 670, it absolutely tanks in Firestrike Ultra (the 670 does too, but not as bad):

 

[skipsneeky2]

Are there any recebt tests of attempting to stress the memory subsystem of the 660 and finding out what impact using it's last 500MB does to performance? How many chips were physically on the board?

Dropping Textures from Very High to Normal somehow makes the game feel even smoother while vram usage caps out at 1550-1564mb.There is a graphics glitch usually before the erratic performance that has disappeared as well.

I made Titanfall crash before with a 970 i had with another rig that i sold.When vram usage went over 3.5gb the game would either crash to desktop or i get a vram error,a lock up that required a reboot or the fps would tank.

Titanfall may be a good test,you could lower all details,adjust the textures and easily hit over 2gb.But this title is maybe the only one i have seen that can physically crash due to vram.