ASUS GTX660 TI-DC2T-2GD5 Pro Reviews

Compared to the XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP provided a better gameplay experience at 1080p in every game except for The Witcher 2. The better performance made a substantial difference in these other 4 games. The ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP also outperformed the XFX Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition in 3 of 5 highest playable settings tests. In the other two games it was not much farther behind in performance. The ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP also matched the stock GeForce GTX 670 in a few games with its stock overclock, and even outperformed it after manually overclocking it. Pricewise the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP sits right at the top of the competition. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 which has more raw power and performance also cost $30 more than the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DC II TOP. As we said the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DC II TOP slightly outperformed one of the highest-end AMD Radeon HD 7950 cards that sell for the same price of $329.99. There are several facets that make the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DC II TOP a solid video card. Not only does this video card have one of the highest factory overclocks, we saw an extreme manual overclocking capability providing an operating speed near 1400MHz while only increasing to 66c with fans that were nearly silent at 100%. The video card also features excellent software support and high quality components that ensure a long lifetime. The overall quality of this video card and competitive price make this video card a gem. Now we just have to wait for it to come into stock with the more aggressive BIOS.

The ASUS GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP provided the most noteworthy experience of this roundup, mostly due to its flip-flopping from one test to another. When a game allowed its Power Limit some breathing room, performance was easily the best within this roundup while maintaining low temperatures and an enviable acoustical profile. However, in certain applications, its clock speeds bounced around quite a bit, causing framerates to drop ever so slightly against the competition.

With a lower entry price and performance similar to much more expensive cards, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is set to shake up the graphics card market. Combined with ample overclocking headroom, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is absolutely the sweet spot for performance per dollar.

Starting out I was impressed with what all three of these cards had to offer in respect to how they performed in the target 1920x1080 resolution. There was not a game in the test suite that could not be run with the eye candy turned up. Each card has a specific envelope that it will perform in based on the clock speeds it is programmed to run from the factory. The ASUS GTX 660Ti DirectCU II TOP has the highest base clock of any of the cards I tested today. As such it is going to outperform the field based on clock speed alone. All things being equal it is going to come down to feature set and the build quality of the product along with the included bundle. What ASUS brings to the table with the GTX 660Ti DirectCU II TOP is a card that has all of these bases covered from its Digi+ VRM and Super Alloy Power power circuits to the massive cooling solution. A solution that is not only impressive for its cooling ability, but that it goes about it so damn quietly. When compared to the last generation GTX 560Ti DirectCU II it is a night/day type of difference in terms of noise levels. Everything on this card is done for stability, efficiency, and performance. The fans have dual seals to protect them from dust intrusion. The Digi+/SAP six phase power circuit takes care of the power delivery with increased current capacity running at cooler temperatures with less electronic noise. You get real tangible benefits long term.

Every time we see a DirectCU II TOP card from ASUS, we are very eager to tear it open and start tweaking. Add to that the fact that ASUS has been on a very good roll recently with the product quality and out-of-box performance, and we have a hard time finding problems with their product. That said, we must be honest here, and ASUS simply did not take top honors as it was mixed in with some very healthy competition. It was a tough call on many benchmarks as they are all the same chipset, and all the results were so close that the differences were within the margins of error. We were a little disappointed to see that the TOP card came with standard clocked memory when it could have easily come with a decent overclock, as we have shown above, and still remained perfectly stable. Overall ASUS made a top quality card with the GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP and it performs great, but it leaves us with a distinct feeling that something was lacking. We believe the memory clock could have really been pushed up higher, but then again Zotac dared to do this. Nonetheless, the lower stock memory clock also explains why the ASUS card was a bit slower in some tests in comparison.

Overall, I see excellent value from the GeForce GTX 660 series. Sharing the same speed and number of CUDA cores and 2GB GDDR5 as the GTX 670 is a huge plus, but the smaller 192-bit memory bandwidth may become a limiting factor and could penalize performance on large-scale video games that require lots of memory resources. NVIDIA's 28nm GK104 'Kepler' GPU has made a huge difference in power consumption and heat output, benefits that really have my attention, which ASUS improves upon by adding their DirectCU-II heatsink with ultra-quiet cooling fans. A fierce factory overclock defines the TOP branding for this card, and DIGI+ VRM features help ensure additional overclocking is met with success. I'm a fan of the GTX 660 Ti as a stand-alone product, but it's certainly worth considering two ASUS GTX660TI's in SLI to help solve the potential memory bandwidth bottleneck.

It's not Asus' fault this card is so irrelevant - you can't make a silk purse from a lame GPU. The starting point of the Nvidia GTX 660 Ti is such a weak one there's nowhere you can go but down. It's a weak GPU with a stupidly high price tag. Avoid and hope the mainstream is catered for properly with an upcoming GTX 660 without the Ti tag.

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a triumph - but we’d go for the stock version over Asus' overclocked TOP