Any GeForce 660/660 Ti Speed Theories?

[Grooveriding]

I believe, millions of gamers would beg to differ when you were to say that BF3, Skyrim, Batman AA, Shogun 2 are irrelevant. Those were blockbusters that sold extremely well, no matter if a couple of people didn't like them. We're talking the non-debatable cases here, not something where you can go either way.
Nvidia does very well in titles like these, at least up to now. Let's see if this pattern continues or not.

When choosing a CPU, people are asked what software they are using. Why should this question be excluded in the GPU sector? Software can be a factor in the purchasing decision.

This is all true. But it still comes down to the gamer. I don't disagree with what you are saying at all, I bought 680s at release because of Battlefield 3 performance for them at that time, but it does come down to what matters to the individual.

Look at Anandtech's bench suite, they cover an array of games to give a balanced look at a card's performance.

It just gets difficult to try and discuss the performance of a card when we start to argue tangents of which benchmarks are more valuable than others.

 

[RussianSensation]

I believe, millions of gamers would beg to differ when you were to say that BF3, Skyrim, Batman AA, Shogun 2 are irrelevant.

Out of those games, the only game where Kepler killed GCN at the beginning was BF3. No doubt about it - HD7970 was very poor for 6 months in BF3. SKYRIM was running at > 80 fps on both 7970 and 680. Heck that game isn't demanding at all. Even runs on HD6950 no problem at 1080P. Shogun 2 was completely broken for NV until June 2012. Batman is a tie but once you turn on 8AA, HD7970 GE creams the 680. Most reviews stop at 4AA but if you wanted 8AA, 7970 GE has a 24% lead over the 680!

Fast forward to today and you can count on 1 hand the number of games where GTX680 can beat a 1050mhz 7970. Even in frame per second vs. time graph, HD7970 GE is the faster card.

Bonus, it costs $50 less now than a GTX680:
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-7970GHZ

So really NV couldn't hold on to the lead. After Cats 12.7Beta and 1050mhz GE version, it lost the single-GPU crown.

Specifically, HD7970 was the fastest GPU from January 9 to March 22, 2012 (that's ~2.5 months), then GTX680 held the crown from March 22, 2012 to June 22, 2012 (3 months) and now AMD has regained the performance crown with 7970 GE and Cats 12.7 starting June 22, 2012. Overall, unless NV does something soon, AMD will end up having the faster card overall for the majority of this generation. Right now the 7970 GE has reclaimed the performance crown in pretty much most reviews and GTX780 appears to be 6 months away+.

The little things such as AO in the driver panel for NV and excellent SLI drivers are what's keeping them in the game. Also, the performance perception from initial Kepler reviews has not faded.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Overall, unless NV does something soon, AMD will end up having the faster card overall for the majority of this generation

Some odd reasoning here. GE is in essence nothing but an overclocked 7970 so going after the bang/buck theory everybody should by a reference 7970 or a preoverclocked card at less and have fun. I really don't see any business reasons why the card was launched but only marketing. It is faster than the 680 because it's overclocked. What now, NV should launch the 1150 MHZ 680 edition and reclaim the top spot? But let's say here you have a point.

Going further down in the lineup.
GTX670 is on average 13% faster than it's counterpart the 7950
GTX660Ti is faster than the 7870 (based on the weak review from TT but things will change only for the better with the launch)

I don't think NV will launch a GTX660 slower than a HD7850 and GTX650Ti slower than a 7770. So where are those faster cards (apart from the curious case of the GHZ edition)?

 

[boxleitnerb]

Out of those games, the only game where Kepler killed GCN at the beginning was BF3. No doubt about it - HD7970 was very poor for 6 months in BF3. SKYRIM was running at > 80 fps on both 7970 and 680. Heck that game isn't demanding at all. Even runs on HD6950 no problem at 1080P. Shogun 2 was completely broken for NV until June 2012. Batman is a tie but once you turn on 8AA, HD7970 GE creams the 680. Most reviews stop at 4AA but if you wanted 8AA, 7970 GE has a 24% lead over the 680!

Fast forward to today and you can count on 1 hand the number of games where GTX680 can beat a 1050mhz 7970. Even in frame per second vs. time graph, HD7970 GE is the faster card.

Bonus, it costs $50 less now than a GTX680:
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-7970GHZ

So really NV couldn't hold on to the lead. After Cats 12.7Beta and 1050mhz GE version, it lost the single-GPU crown.

Specifically, HD7970 was the fastest GPU from January 9 to March 22, 2012 (that's ~2.5 months), then GTX680 held the crown from March 22, 2012 to June 22, 2012 (3 months) and now AMD has regained the performance crown with 7970 GE and Cats 12.7 starting June 22, 2012. Overall, unless NV does something soon, AMD will end up having the faster card overall for the majority of this generation. Right now the 7970 GE has reclaimed the performance crown in pretty much most reviews and GTX780 appears to be 6 months away+.

The little things such as AO in the driver panel for NV and excellent SLI drivers are what's keeping them in the game. Also, the performance perception from initial Kepler reviews has not faded.

Who said anything about killing? But performance advantages of up to 25% have been observed in all of those games at release. Shogun 2 was broken due to a patch, not already at the release of Kepler. Skyrim is only not demanding if you don't know what SSAA is. It looks great in Skyrim and then Kepler really pulls away.

It's funny that this time around the roles seem reversed. AMD has the higher performance on average but with significantly higher power consumption - just as Nvidia did before.

 

[RussianSensation]

Some odd reasoning here. GE is in essence nothing but an overclocked 7970 so going after the bang/buck theory everybody should by a reference 7970 or a preoverclocked card at less and have fun. I really don't see any business reasons why the card was launched but only marketing. It is faster than the 680 because it's overclocked. What now, NV should launch the 1150 MHZ 680 edition and reclaim the top spot? But let's say here you have a point.

I agree that HD7970 is better value but so is 670 vs. the 680, so not sure what the point of that is.

Right now GE still costs $50 less than a stock 680 and way less than just about any factory preoverclocked 680.
Gigabyte Windforce 3x Factory overclocked 680 for $525
vs.
Sapphire Vapor-X HD7970 GE 1.05ghz for $450.

NV is charging $75 more for what exactly?

GE is an official SKU. It's no different calling it overclocked than other such cards in the past:

1) 9800Pro vs. 9800XT
1) X800XT vs. X800XT Platinum Edition (PE)
3) X850XT vs. X850XT Platinum Edition
4) FX5900 Ultra vs. FX5950U

In fact, using your logic, GeForce 4 Ti 4600 is an overclocked GeForce 4 Ti 4200. All of the above SKUs are identical cards with only clock speeds separating them.

The GE is a refresh of the 7970. Maybe AMD should have called it HD7980 or HD7970 Platinum Edition. The marketing is confusing that's for sure.

However, not sure why you keep ignore GE. Sure, you can buy factory pre-overclocked 680s but I don't see many of those for $500. At the current price level a $500 GTX680 trails the GE in benchmarks. If you take OCed vs. OCed performance, HD7970 once again beats an overclocked 680 for overall performance crown.

Stock vs. stock or overclocked vs. overclocked, HD7970 GE has that slight edge now that's enough to call it the fastest single-GPU.

It's funny that this time around the roles seem reversed. AMD has the higher performance on average but with significantly higher power consumption - just as Nvidia did before.

I wouldn't say 35-45W is a significant power consumption difference, especially not when talking about a system that even with a GTX670 already uses > 300W.

Here you go, 1200mhz HD7970 vs. GTX680, still below a stock GTX580:

Skyrim is only not demanding if you don't know what SSAA is. It looks great in Skyrim and then Kepler really pulls away.

Do you have a link with SSAA in SKYIM for GTX680 vs. 7970/GE?

Here I found a bunch of games with SSAA and the performance is very similar, outside of Bulletstorm where 680 loses badly:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/6/

Here is Trine 2 with SSAA, 680 loses:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/bericht-nvidia-geforce-gtx-680/10/

7970 also pulls away in high-AA modes (a bunch of games tested):
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/bericht-nvidia-geforce-gtx-680/5/

Also, the recently popular Arma II Day Z mod - GTX680 doesn't stand a chance:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/06/22/amd-radeon-7970-3gb-ghz-edition-review/3

Like I said with the latest drivers, HD7970 GE has really come out swinging. The tables have turned completely with the 680 trailing in most games now. Frostbite 2.0 games is about the only area left where Kepler is really strong. When GTX680 came out, it was clearly the faster card. It's unbelievable how much ground AMD's driver team has made up in 3 months.