[H] ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II Video Card Review

[f1sherman]

Since AMD launched their cards first with no competition, they would definitely price it according to what was out in the market (ie. if their cards are faster than the competition they would price higher). Now that there IS competition, they have to match what nV is charging according to where it is on the performance ladder. So yes, AMD is the one lowering prices, because they were early with their cards. That's how it has always worked.

It's more like

1. NV launches the card
2. Meh...too little, too late. Go AMD gogogo!
3. AMD drops their prices. (WTH??)

AMD keeps lowering their entire lineup, so by now they should be a nobrainer.
Yet here comes GTX 660, and 7850/7870 are offering only perf/$ parity.

So to me it seems that we have a new sheriff in town.
Something like GTX 460(560) vs HD6850(6870) situation - only worse for AMD.

Because this time around NV turned the table with all those metrics that plagued Fermi and convincingly won the mindshare.
No one even knows the name of AMD arch... Northern Ireland, West Scotland, CNN?
OTOH NV has the freaking KEPLER - and everyone wants one.
I am exaggerating, but you get the picture

 

[SirPauly]

NV had 2.5+ quarters to mount a card against the 7870.

Indeed! Late is Late! Considering nVidia may of been 28nm constrained they may of placed their 28nm resources where it made the most sense from a supply/demand, revenue, profit and margin stand-point. Amd had the 7850 and 7870 going head-to-head with GTX 570's, GTX 560ti-448 and GTX 560 Ti sku's.

Instead of offering flop and unacceptable -- personally, simply, offer credit to AMD for executing a complete family and enjoy to see their company enjoy the fruits of their engineering prowess.

The Tech Report offered the GTX 660 an editors choice and you offer unacceptable and flop.

 

[RussianSensation]

It's more like

1. NV launches the card
2. Meh...too little, too late.

No, when NV launched a new high-end line and offered better price/performance and performance/watt with GTX670/680, they became great cards from March to early June. Most of us recommended those cards without problems. Then AMD lowered prices on 7950/7970 line, made major improvements with drivers, launched after-market HD7970 GE cards and GTX670/680 got beaten in performance and price/performance. NV spent no time improving their performance problems while AMD spent time fixing the problems in games.

The end result is loss of performance crown from NV this round, despite still charging $500 for a slower product:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7970_Toxic_6_GB/28.html

NV launching GTX660/660Ti 6-7 months late is totally different. They offer nothing over the competition worth talking about. Especially, the 660Ti. That card is just a marketing grab at $300. HD7950 smashes it for any enthusiast who is willing to spend 5 min in MSI Afterburner.

Go AMD gogogo!

You haven't said 1 positive thing about AMD's cards this generation. Objective much?

Still deny this 7970 GE is the fastest card?
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660/5/

Still deny that GTX660Ti OC < HD7950 OC?
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/08/23/galaxy_gtx_660_ti_gc_oc_vs_670_hd_7950/3

Still deny that NV offered no desktop GPUs worth buying < $300 from February 2012 to August 2012? 7 months of not a single 28nm desktop GPU worth buying from NV <$300 (by virtue of them not launching any besides the crippled GT640).

3. AMD drops their prices. (WTH??)

That's expected in a First Mover Strategy. When your competitor is way behind, and you have the latest tech with good performance, you raise prices. See GTX280 for $649 and GTX260 for $399 or 8800GTX for $599. Happens all the time when there is little competition.

What competition did HD7850/7870 cards have? None.

AMD keeps lowering their entire lineup, so by now they should be a nobrainer.

No, NV fans won't buy AMD cards even when they are much faster and cost less or even when they offer overall superior performance/price and performance/watt. This was already proven:

HD4850/4870/4890 offered amazing price/performance for a long time.
HD5850 $269 / HD5870 $369 had 0 competition for 6 months and no competition from performance/watt from NV that generation
HD6950 unlocked was the best value for high-end gamers last generation against 570/580 cards.

Since none of that worked to get people like you to buy AMD cards, following the same thing over and over again seems like a waste of $ and time.

In fact, NV fans waited waited 6-7 months to give their $ to NV even though GTX470/480 had terrible performance/watt. How in the world did you buy any Fermi cards since you seem to care so much now about performance/watt?

Since NV fanboys still bought GTX285 over 5850, AMD could launch HD8970 for $299 6 months uncontested, and people would still buy GTX680 or wait 6 months for $499 GTX780. You know it's true.

and people still bought the 285 or HD7950 for $450 against GTX580 for $450 for 3 months. I would bet if HD8970 beat GTX680 by 50%, you still wouldn't buy it and wait 3-6 months for GTX780, am I right?

Yet here comes GTX 660, and 7850/7870 are offering only perf/$ parity.

HD6950 Unlocked was $250 1.5 years ago. That's real value.
HD7850 OC was $250 6 months ago. That's value since it beat up 570/580 cards for 6 months!

And now you have GTX660 that's = HD7870. That's market changing? :sneaky:

So to me it seems that we have a new sheriff in town.

You must have not read any reviews?

GTX660 ~ HD7870.
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660/5/

Something like GTX 460(560) vs HD6850(6870) situation - only worse for AMD.

You can't be failing harder with this analogy.

Does GTX660 overclock 30-40% like GTX460 did? No.
Does GTX660 have a good lead in DX11 titles with tessellation that GTX460 @ 900mhz had? No.

Are these benchmarks fake? I am not seeing 660 beating 7870. They are roughly equal.

^ So according to you GTX660 is the CLEAR choice? :awe:

Maybe if all you play is WOW?

This review doesn't count with 15 games?
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2012/test-nvidia-geforce-gtx-660/5/

Or this one with 18 games?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_660_Direct_Cu_II/27.html

Because this time around NV turned the table with all those metrics that plagued Fermi and convincingly won the mindshare.

Oh, so this is what it's about. Winning mindshare for the brand, not comparing GPUs 1 by 1 but focusing on performance/watt only?

Interesting. So none of these features count anymore:

- 6 Screen Eyefinity (Kepler can't do this)
- 3x 2560x1600 3D gaming out of the box (Kepler can't do this)
- Faster 8xMSAA and performance in games with mods
- Overall faster performance (7970 GE > 680, HD7970 1Ghz > GTX670, HD7950 OC > GTX660Ti, HD7770 > GTX650)
- Better overclocked performance + higher overclocking headroom
- GPGPU / double precision compute for distributed computing projects
- Bitcoin mining $$$ on the side when not gaming
- More consistent performance in most modern games (not just 5-6 popular games)
- More VRAM without a price premium (see 4GB GTX670/680 or 3GB GTX660Ti)

I guess you still can't accept the market share data but keep talking about "mindshare"?
http://www.techpowerup.com/171198/G...nally-Down-from-Last-Quarter-Reports-JPR.html

No one even knows the name of AMD arch... Northern Ireland, West Scotland, CNN?
OTOH NV has the freaking KEPLER - and everyone wants one.

Maybe this is because Johannes Kepler was a famous scientist which is why the name Kepler is easy to remember vs. Graphics Core Next?

Pretty funny you ignored all AMD's advantages, how convenient. I hope $400-500 you spent on GTX680 are helping you sleep happy at night. I'll take HD7970 for $0 and then when I actually have to spend my own $ to upgrade, I'll do it in 2-3 years from now. For now I'll take free videocards. Let me know how much you spend on GTX780 next generation so we can calculate the real world price/performance to strengthen your argument.

Serious question if AMD offered 50% more performance for half price or similar performance for 50% lower price, would you buy it over an NV card? You obviously won't buy an AMD card if it costs less and offers more performance since you bought a GTX680, right? So how much cheaper and faster would an AMD card have to be for you to buy it? 50% cheaper and 50% faster?

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

I think I can understand the market share data and nVidia holds close to 60 percent market share there and only loss 2.5 share considering they didn't have a complete 28nm line and were 28nm constrained -- still garnered a 15 percent increase in GeForce revenue sequentially, which in the transcript, gave credit to performance and enthusiast GTX sectors.

nVidia has a strong brand name, which may encompass a great deal from developer relations, out-of-the-box feature differentiation, driver support that goes beyond performance enhancements but fidelity and gaming experience enhancements for new and older generations.

nVidia has basically offered, the reason why they try to be proactive is the market may reward them with a premium over the competition. That's why they do it and it seems the market may be reacting to this strategy.

 

[toyota]

tomshardware claims to run the built in benchmark for Metro 2033 but there is no way in hell those results are right. for one thing the minimum framerate is always going to be low in that bench yet they show cards scaling up and getting over 30 fps. I have ran that bench hundreds and hundreds of times on various cards on various settings and have never seen good minimums from it. in fact it is almost always in the single digits and never consistent.

 

[RussianSensation]

Ya the High Preset can mean they made some adjustments in the settings but I know what you mean about low mins. 660 won that test slightly. It doesn't change the results from 4 major reviews that tested 15+ games or that 660's performance is all over the place. When it wins, it's barely winning and when it loses, it's dropping by 10%+.

Toyota,

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_660_Direct_Cu_II/images/perfrel_1920.gif

HD6950 Unlocked 6970 = 88%
GTX570 = 90%
GTX660 = 91%
HD7870 = 99%
GTX660 aftermarket = 100%

Wasn't GTX570 $260-275 12 months ago on Newegg? GTX660 looks better than $349 HD7870 7 months ago but it's been 7 months. Also, using $349 overpriced pricing on the 7870 doesn't mask the problem of value in this generation below $250 range.

That means compared to an unlocked HD6950 from February-April 2011 or to GTX570s shortly thereafter, both the 7870 and the 660 are barely 10% faster 1-1.5 year later. That's the sad story this generation. The fact that it took NV 7 more month to launch the 660 hurt the consumers big time.

 

[toyota]

Ya the High Present can mean they made some adjustments in the settings. 660 won that test slightly. It doesn't change the results from 4 major reviews that tested 15+ games or that 660's performance is all over the place. When it wins, it's barely winning and when it loses, it's dropping by 10%+.

Toyota,

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_660_Direct_Cu_II/images/perfrel_1920.gif

HD6950 Unlocked 6970 = 88%
GTX570 = 90%
GTX660 = 91%

Wasn't GTX570 $260-275 12 months ago on Newegg? GTX660 looks better than $349 HD7870 7 months ago but it's been 7 months. Also, using $349 overpriced pricing on the 7870 doesn't mask the problem of value in this generation below $250 range.

That means to an unlocked HD6950 from February-April 2011 or from GTX570s shortly thereafter, both the 7870 and the 660 are barely 10% faster 1.5 year later. That's the sad story this generation.

yeah almost exactly 11 months ago I paid $260 for my gtx570 plus it came with Batman AC.

 

[SirPauly]

That's the sad story this generation.

The performance value based on a substantial and significant node and arch change based on history is also my constructive nit-pick this generation from both AMD and nVidia. However, with more 28nm choice, competition and aggressive pricing from AMD -- gamers have much better 28nm price/performance to choose from -- and hopefully may improve -- competition heats up more as 28nm matures.

 

[Jaydip]

It's more like

1. NV launches the card
2. Meh...too little, too late. Go AMD gogogo!
3. AMD drops their prices. (WTH??)

AMD keeps lowering their entire lineup, so by now they should be a nobrainer.
Yet here comes GTX 660, and 7850/7870 are offering only perf/$ parity.

So to me it seems that we have a new sheriff in town.
Something like GTX 460(560) vs HD6850(6870) situation - only worse for AMD.

Because this time around NV turned the table with all those metrics that plagued Fermi and convincingly won the mindshare.
No one even knows the name of AMD arch... Northern Ireland, West Scotland, CNN?
OTOH NV has the freaking KEPLER - and everyone wants one.
I am exaggerating, but you get the picture

Awesome Fish I just loled :biggrin: