NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI Review

[bluesquare07]

Recently I've been very interested in SLI 660s. You get 20-50% more performance than a 680 at a lower cost.

Techpowerup just did a review for the recently released 650Ti Boost. For around $340, you get superior performance (assuming no stutter, sli is supposed to be good in that regard) to a 7970ghz and a 680. Pretty good value! Personally, I'd still go for the sli 660s. Higher performance and a 660 at 1080p provides acceptable performance if there are problems with SLI for a specific title. This is of course mainly focusing on 1080p gaming.

"Unlike AMD, NVIDIA does a good job of maintaining its SLI profiles, so you should be able to play new games without a long wait for multi-GPU support. However, the risk that a game will not be supported still exists, and you might, at worst, end up with single-card performance. This is in my opinion, given the massive performance-per-dollar advantage, an acceptable tradeoff. I would definitely recommend a GTX 650 Ti Boost SLI setup to a friend looking to spend as little money as possible on a high-end gaming rig." - techpowerup

Thoughts?

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, it depends, I usually think of multi GPU as a way of maximizing performance when a single top end card won't do. Then again, your quote does make sense in theory; it just depends what games and what resolution. 1080p does sound fine for dual 660s, only draw back to mid range SLI is that you can't double your performance later as with a single high end card.

 

[bluesquare07]

Hmm, it depends, I usually think of multi GPU as a way of maximizing performance when a single top end card won't do. Then again, your quote does make sense in theory; it just depends what games and what resolution. 1080p does sound fine for dual 660s, only draw back to mid range SLI is that you can't double your performance later as with a single high end card.

I agree, but think about it. Majority of people who buy a 670-680 wont buy a second card, as theyll often wait and buy a 7xx instead. This way, for less than the cost of a 680, you get even better performance. I think that's why NV released the 680 first, anyway. If you have 1000 to spend on dual 680s, by all means go ahead or buy a titan. But, if you have ~400, this seems like a GREAT option for 1080p
Ps SC2 is great. go zerg

 

[Jaydip]

The problem from what I have seen is the minimums are not impacted very much by pairing two weak cards in SLI.I would rather get a 660 instead.

 

[ICDP]

SLI does work great as long as you have a triple A title. Nvidia make sure most AAA games get working SLI profiles as close to release as possible. My problem was that I play a lot of flight and racing sims and they rarely ever get working profiles from Nvidia.

I was having to create custom profiles that were not 100% stable or simply didn't work. In most of my preferred games I was getting midrange card performance for almost the same price as highend performance.

GTX260 SLI
GTX460 1GB SLI

I also tried GTX680 SLI briefly and most of my sims either didn't work in SLI, caused negative scaling or when the FPS did increase I got graphical problems. Like I said, absolutely great for popular titles but step outside the mainstream games and you began seeing the serious drawbacks.

 

[boxleitnerb]

What sims would that be? I know someone very versed with SLI profiles with a direct connection to Nvidia. Maybe I can help?

On the topic of 650 Ti Boost SLI:
I would not do SLI (or CF for that matter) if a single GPU solution existed that could (almost) reach the performance (in terms of fps). Even if it is more expensive. AFR-fps do not equal singleGPU-fps. Add to that the needed profiles, bugs with AFR (Crysis 2 nanovision bug that took months to fix)...SLI is nice, but not really recommendable in that segment to save a couple of bucks.

 

[ICDP]

What sims would that be? I know someone very versed with SLI profiles with a direct connection to Nvidia. Maybe I can help?

On the topic of 650 Ti Boost SLI:
I would not do SLI (or CF for that matter) if a single GPU solution existed that could (almost) reach the performance (in terms of fps). Even if it is more expensive. AFR-fps do not equal singleGPU-fps. Add to that the needed profiles, bugs with AFR (Crysis 2 nanovision bug that took months to fix)...SLI is nice, but not really recommendable in that segment to save a couple of bucks.

DCS World (DCS A-10C, Blackshark, P51)
FSX
Rfactor2 (I believe this has been resolved)

I haven't used SLI for months and probably wont for a while but I'm sure many SLI users would like DCS to work in SLI. Thanks for the kind offer

Titan would be a great option if it wasn't for the price. While many are happy to pay $1000 for a GPU, here in the UK it costs ~£950. Not a good return of investment considering a GPU such as a GTX680 or 7970 can be purchased for less than half the price and be within ~30%-40% of the perfomance.

My criteria for going top end singlegpu over second tier SLI is for the single GPU solution to be within 25% of the performance for similar price. Titan is outside that for performance and way outside for price. It is possible to get higher than Titan performance using SLI GTX 670 for £600 here in the UK. It is actually cheaper to purchase 3 way SLI GTX 670s and that will leave Titan in the dust for performance. At that serious price/perf deficit the Titan is just overpriced and slow compared to an SLI solution.

 

[willomz]

From what I have seen SLI does actually work very well for 660s, better than for almost any other card.

It's not quite that you need a AAA title for SLI to work well, but you need the title to challenge the graphics card. What we saw with the 3x7970 and 3xTitan review on techpowerup was that it really only worked at 5760.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy5478lBais
http://www.behardware.com/articles/...rce-gtx-660-asus-directcu-ii-top-and-sli.html

We see the 660 SLI beating both the 680 and 7970GE in every title (apart from Dirt Showdown).

If you look at a title like Crysis 2 which showed dreadful scaling for top end cards like 7970 and Titan the 660s actually achieve very good scaling here.

660 - 82% scaling
7970 - 20% scaling
Titan - 5% scaling

Of course the downsides are requiring an SLI capable MB and slightly higher power consumption.

 

[ICDP]

From what I have seen SLI does actually work very well for 660s, better than for almost any other card.

It's not quite that you need a AAA title for SLI to work well, but you need the title to challenge the graphics card. What we saw with the 3x7970 and 3xTitan review on techpowerup was that it really only worked at 5760.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy5478lBais
http://www.behardware.com/articles/...rce-gtx-660-asus-directcu-ii-top-and-sli.html

We see the 660 SLI beating both the 680 and 7970GE in every title (apart from Dirt Showdown).

If you look at a title like Crysis 2 which showed dreadful scaling for top end cards like 7970 and Titan the 660s actually achieve very good scaling here.

660 - 82% scaling
7970 - 20% scaling
Titan - 5% scaling

Of course the downsides are requiring an SLI capable MB and slightly higher power consumption.

My experience is that when a title does not have a working profile you end up with crap performance given the price of SLI. AAA titles are very well supported but if you are into niche games you are usually left with no effective solution. So SLI is a great option as long as you are only into AAA titles.

 

[willomz]

Maybe, but I suspect there are very few games that don't support SLI that don't already have great performance with a single 660.

 

[bluesquare07]

Maybe, but I suspect there are very few games that don't support SLI that don't already have great performance with a single 660.

Exactly.