660ti 2gb essentially 1.5gb?

[moonbogg]

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.

The reason is because they replaced their high end GPU's with mid range ones and charge high end prices for them. This leaves the mid range product line very weak because the mid range GPU's are being used to trick people into thinking they have traditionally sold for $500+. How can you have a good mid range product when you already sell your mid range product as a high end product? They then sell the real high end product as an ULTRA RIDICULOUS high end product for TWICE the cost of an actual high end product! A FULL GRAND!!!

So, the mid range products are no longer available to be sold at mid range prices. They are forced to fake it with low end products and pretend they are mid range.

 

[railven]

I ran into a VRAM issue with my GTX 660 Tis, why I ditched em post haste.

At the time I was running Skyrim and was getting into user modes. I noticed the moment I crept over 1560 (or so, exact number I no longer remember) I'd get horrendous stuttering when turning. I attributed it to a memory issue, but clearly I hadn't hit the 2GB treshold.

I self modded a file from using 200mbs of VRAM to <50mbs dropping my total VRAM usage well below that stutter point and magically the issue went away.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Oddly enough i hardly hit 1500mb with Very high textures in GTA V but on normal textures now it just sits in the 1550-1560mb range.Hard drive light went from constantly blinking to barely now.Settings now claim i should be using about 1150mb instead of the 1991mb with Very high

I could try some DSR to see if usage goes over 1560 but i know even if it didn't,performance would drop like a rock eitherway.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Game claims i should be using over 2500mb with Very high textures at 4k.Its capping at the same 1550-1560.It goes up to 1584 or so for a second before dropping back as low as 1534 lol.

Playable in the 35-58fps range but i have most stuff disabled.Textures are very high and grass is high.Tess is maxed but the rest is off for the most part.

 

[RussianSensation]

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....

Time to upgrade to GP104 1070/1080. Even if GTX660 had 32GB of VRAM, it's sloooooooooooooooow.

 

[Vaporizer]

Compare 7870 against former competitor 660. That is hilarious! I assume most 660 owners changed already to 970 (beeing VRAM limited/betrayed again). Lets see how long this card will hold up to its competitor.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Time to upgrade to GP104 1070/1080. Even if GTX660 had 32GB of VRAM, it's sloooooooooooooooow.
]

It works for the games i usually play but yes i do intend on upgrading when Pascal drops.I don't need much,a discounted 290 or 970 would suffice.I could bump up a couple settings and maybe get 50% fps increase and be happy but any more is of course welcomed

Might buy in October or Nov after the beta for the next Battlefield drops,its most likely the title that will factor in my purchase decision.By then i hope also a $200-$250 Pascal card has dropped or the 290/970 has discounted even more.:thumbsup:

 

[Arachnotronic]

It works for the games i usually play but yes i do intend on upgrading when Pascal drops.I don't need much,a discounted 290 or 970 would suffice.I could bump up a couple settings and maybe get 50% fps increase and be happy but any more is of course welcomed

Might buy in October or Nov after the beta for the next Battlefield drops,its most likely the title that will factor in my purchase decision.By then i hope also a $200-$250 Pascal card has dropped or the 290/970 has discounted even more.:thumbsup:

You might be able to find 290/390/970 on clearance but more likely they will just be EOL'd when the new products drop.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Time to upgrade to GP104 1070/1080. Even if GTX660 had 32GB of VRAM, it's sloooooooooooooooow.

There is guides for GTA V on which settings tank the most,which if you shut off or lower to high the game doesn't look that bad yet the frames are dramatically higher then those charts show.

Hills and mountains i drop into the mid 50s with grass on high,highways and city i hardly drop below 60 but have seen closer to 90 at times often enough.Textures need to stay on Normal simply cause of vram issues but if the 660 was a 3gb it would be perfectly smooth on Very High.My testing is of course for 1440p as well.

More reviews like Hardocp need to show what cards can do with certain settings,not show how horrible a lower end card is with enabling settings no one in their right mind would run in the first place.

 

[Excessi0n]

I have a pair of 660TIs in SLI and they definitely start stuttering when VRAM is full/almost full. Which is pretty much always, these days.

Nvidia and AMD need to hurry up and release their big chips already. I could really use an upgrade.

 

[PontiacGTX]

Compare 7870 against former competitor 660. That is hilarious! I assume most 660 owners changed already to 970 (beeing VRAM limited/betrayed again). Lets see how long this card will hold up to its competitor.

it is known that nvidia has been crippling the drivers on kepler froma while since maxwell was released to make a bigger gap between them and force users to upgrade

 

[tential]

it is known that nvidia has been crippling the drivers on kepler froma while since maxwell was released to make a bigger gap between them and force users to upgrade

Source...

 

[caswow]

Compare 7870 against former competitor 660. That is hilarious! I assume most 660 owners changed already to 970 (beeing VRAM limited/betrayed again). Lets see how long this card will hold up to its competitor.

i decided against the 7870 because of nvidias "superior" drivers...well one thing is certain my next card will be a amd thats for sure. since 1997 the 660 was the worst card ive every bought and owned :thumbsdown:

 

[RussianSensation]

i decided against the 7870 because of nvidias "superior" drivers...well one thing is certain my next card will be a amd thats for sure. since 1997 the 660 was the worst card ive every bought and owned :thumbsdown:

NV hasn't made a good x60 series card since GTX560Ti / 560Ti 448 core. Everything after that was all inferior to AMD's competing cards. The issue with Kepler is also it was VRAM gimped and the architecture was terrible for next gen games compared to GCN. It turned out to have no legs whatsoever and started falling apart badly in newer games as early as November 2014. At least 660/660Ti didn't look that bad at launch. Things got much worse with GTX760 vs. 7950 V2 but 960 was easily the worst x60 series card since the atrocious 8600GT/S.

NV gimped 960 like no tomorrow. It's a 950/950Ti card marketed as a 960.

Upgrade path #1
GTX470->970 = 3.15X increase in performance
GTX460->960 = 2.7X increase in performance :thumbsdown:

Update path #2
GTX670->970 = 59% increase in performance
GTX660->960 = 44% increase in performance :thumbsdown:

Upgrade path #3
GTX770->970 = 34% increase in performance
GTX760->960 = 14% increase in performance :thumbsdown:

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-05/geforce-gtx-470-570-670-770-970-vergleich/2/

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-03/geforce-gtx-460-560-660-760-960-vergleich/2/

For over a year I used to warn gamers to skip 960 altogether because I predicted 960 owners will spend $200 on that card and another $200 on a next gen card just to barely beat an after-market 290 = 390.

An after-market 290/390 is a whopping 72% faster than a 960 at 1440p.

When you start playing market games with names and start selling low-end crap for $200, no drivers can help you. Unfortunately, a vast amount of PC gamers bought the marketing deception and lies of the x60 marketing name that no longer means squat vs. what it used to mean.

Back in the days, x60 and esp. x60 Ti series cards used to mean getting a TON of flagship performance for a fraction of the price. Today x60 is low end overpriced trash.

http://www.techspot.com/review/359-nvidia-geforce-gtx-560ti/page12.html

It's actually remarkable how quickly PC gamers forget the entire history of GPUs.

Rumours have it that NV will have a 3-tier GP104 roll-out this time. Hopefully $229 GTX1060/Ti delivers R9 390/390X level of performance.

Might buy in October or Nov after the beta for the next Battlefield drops,its most likely the title that will factor in my purchase decision.By then i hope also a $200-$250 Pascal card has dropped or the 290/970 has discounted even more.:thumbsup:

Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Video Card w/ 3 Games = $199.99 November 2014

PowerColor Radeon R9 290X 4GB GDDR5 Video Card = $254.99 November 2014

XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB = $234.99 November 2015

Having 290/290X/390 level of performance at $200-250 by the time BF5 launches in Q4 2016 is nothing special. Then again, I've been pointing this out since January 2015 but nope, people still bought 960s.

I also wouldn't touch a GTX970 at all anymore. NV's drivers will shift to Pascal and 3.5GB of VRAM vs. Polaris 10/R9 390 having at least 4GB of real GDDR5 is just asking for trouble. Besides, 970 is falling apart against 390 in many modern titles which is a huge red flag.

With a $250 USD budget, I'd save a bit more and jump to a 1060Ti/Polaris 10.

 

[skipsneeky2]

An after-market 290/390 is a whopping 72% faster than a 960 at 1440p.

Rumours have it that NV will have a 3-tier GP104 roll-out this time. Hopefully $229 GTX1060/Ti delivers R9 390/390X level of performance.

Me myself i want 390/390x performance as well and like you i hope the GTX1060/TI deliver the same 1440p performance.I would need a 390x to double my performance over a 660 but i am patient enough at this point to wait on a GTX1060/TI .

If this generation is anything to go by,the GTX1070/490/490x simply may really the cards to go for and heck ones i would save up for.Seems the GTX XX60 series cards tank seriously hard pass 1080p anyways unless Pascal changes that.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Me myself i want 390/390x performance as well and like you i hope the GTX1060/TI deliver the same 1440p performance.I would need a 390x to double my performance over a 660 but i am patient enough at this point to wait on a GTX1060/TI .

If this generation is anything to go by,the GTX1070/490/490x simply may really the cards to go for and heck ones i would save up for.Seems the GTX XX60 series cards tank seriously hard pass 1080p anyways unless Pascal changes that.

The newer x60 cards seem to be severely lacking where the memory subsystems are concerned, hence tanking beyond 1080P. Sticking with 2 GB also appears to be a mistake, though it's a common one among both AMD and Nvidia.

What I find interesting to note is that while the GTX 750 TI packs 2 MB of L2, the 960 only possesses 1 MB, the 980 and 970 getting 2 MB and 1.5 MB respectively. I am curious as to how that plays into performance.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

NBA 2k15 uses 2GB of VRAM on maxed settings 2XAA @1080.

 

[Deders]

How are you measuring you Vram usage?

From what I remember Kepler's memory bandwidth and ROP relationship aren't tied together in the same way that Maxwell's is. I could be wrong.

I'm certainly using 3GB of Vram in some games. I'm measuring this in realtime using MSI Afterburner on my keyboard's screen. Usually it is Texture quality that affects this the most. MSAA can have a big hit, I usually prefer to use Temporal SMAA if it is available in high memory situations.

 

[lehtv]

--

 

[poofyhairguy]

i decided against the 7870 because of nvidias "superior" drivers...well one thing is certain my next card will be a amd thats for sure. since 1997 the 660 was the worst card ive every bought and owned :thumbsdown:

Reading this thread from the start is amazing. The 7870 went from losing to a 660 ti sometimes to beating a 680.

Hell the 7870 competed against three! generations of x60 series cards thanks to rebranding. To have those types of increases without new GPUs over time is remarkable.

If history holds the best Polaris 10 might not beat the 1070 day one, but it will beat it one day. I might buy one before any reviews even.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Reading this thread from the start is amazing. The 7870 went from losing to a 660 ti sometimes to beating a 680.

Hell the 7870 competed against three! generations of x60 series cards thanks to rebranding. To have those types of increases without new GPUs over time is remarkable.

I always remember if i recall a oced 7870 hitting 7950 speeds,which in turn made it nearly as fast as a 670 if not faster in some cases.The fact if true of it being as fast or faster then a 680 is pretty insane.I had a 7850 some time back which i got cause when oced it was supposed to be as fast as a 7870. Got a dud but overall still a nice card.

I never followed this claim much of Nvidia gimping,are newer games getting little to no support making the 7000 series look much better with better AMD support?Or can someone actually get like a 2012 game title,bench old and new drivers and find a fps lost in those?

 

[zentan]

Just wondering how well 7870XT would be doing now.Might be very competitive with 960,may be not in perf/w but with performance.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Just wondering how well 7870XT would be doing now.Might be very competitive with 960,may be not in perf/w but with performance.

Newer games seem to focus particularly on raw compute, thus the 7870 (a high clocked one anyway) should be approximately on par with the 960 in shader bound situations, exceeding it where memory bandwidth becomes a bottleneck as well.

You can also see this effect in newer games vs the 960 and 970. The differences between these particular cards has narrowed somewhat, closely to match the difference in compute rather than other factors.

 

[zentan]

It would seem very competitive.It actually was a 256bit Tahiti implementation.In performance it was closer to 7950/boost ed than it was to 7870.With higher number of SPs and other units along with more bandwidth it was quite a bit ahead of 7870.

 

[VirtualLarry]

NV hasn't made a good x60 series card since GTX560Ti / 560Ti 448 core.

Back in the days, x60 and esp. x60 Ti series cards used to mean getting a TON of flagship performance for a fraction of the price. Today x60 is low end overpriced trash.

You got that right, RS.

I had GTX460 cards back in the day, they were legendary.