nVidia seems very busy these days rolling out new cards one after another which has sent Team Ruby slashing prices left and right to compete with these new solutions. Back in August, nVidia revealed its GK104 GPU and one of the cards that’s packing this graphics processor is what we have for review today: the GTX660 Ti. But not just any reference model. For this round we’ll be checking out ASUS’ take on these graphics solution with their GeForce GTX660 Ti DirectCUII TOP variant. Read on and let’s make this showy!
We’re back again with another ASUS card, another DirectCUII TOP model nonetheless. This time around ASUS has put their touch on the GK104-based GTX660 Ti from nVidia. The GTX660 Ti packs 1344 CUDA cores clocked in at 915Mhz with a 2GB framebuffer clocking in at 1502Mhz on a 192-bit bus. ASUS has beefed up this card with their custom DirectCUII cooler and has overclocked the card to an impressive 1059Mhz whilst retaining its reference memory frequencies. As we’ve seen before, nVidia’s GPU Boost works on top on a overclock, giving this card as much as 1137Mhz core clock when available.
You can read more about the card’s specs over at the product page here.
CLOSER LOOK
The ASUS GTX660 Ti DCUII TOP is a custom designed card that features a black PCB with ASUS choice components. The DirectCUII coolers covers the entire length of the card, extending an inch or so over one end of the card. This card requires 2 PCI-e 6-pin adapter for power. This card takes up 2 slots in and has 4 display output ports.
PERFORMANCE
Capcom’s Resident Evil spin-off title Operation: Racoon City puts us in the boots of Umbrella’s Delta Team comprising of their top operatives who get caught into the company’s twisted scheme in covering up their insidious activities.
STALKER: Call of Pripyat is an FPS title from GSC Game World. The game was released in 2010 but being a DirectX11, is still relevant in most applications. The game features a benchmarking tool to assess the user’s system, doing a 4-scenario test to fully simulate every in-game environment.
Another MMO installation in the storied Final Fantasy franchise, Final Fantasy XIV isn’t really the most hotly anticipated game but we’ll include it here since it has a nice benchmarking tool.
Sniper Elite V2 is a remake of the acclaimed original game from 2009 which puts the player in the shoes of a World War 2 sniper in the heart of Germany. With an updated game engine, the visuals are heavily improved. The game has a benchmark tool to assess how the game will perform on a preset scenario.
Resident Evil 5 sends players to uncharted regions as famed S.T.A.R.S. agent Chris Redfield.
Devil May Cry 4 show’s how Capcom still has love for PC gamers. Follow Nero and Dante as they hack, shoot and slash their way through countless enemies in style in this awesome fast-paced action game.
Battlefield 3 is one of the hottest titles of 2011 and continues to prove itself a worthy game. Based on DICE’s Frostbite Engine 2, this game’s lush details and visuals are just stunning but can really stress any modern GPU.
Unigine Heaven 3.0 is the latest iteration of the benchmarking utility for the Unigine engine. This benchmark stresses any GPU with options for DX9 to DX11 tests and boasts highly impressive tessellation scenes.
Bottom-line: The ASUS’s GeForce 660Ti puts a chokehold on the HD7870 and comes almost neck to neck with the GTX670.
TEMPERATURE & POWER CONSUMPTION
To measure both power consumption and heat, we stress the video card and record the peak values for heat and wattage. Our test system consumes an average of of 260W when the GPU is on full-load. Subtracting the idle wattage from this figure gives us 159 which should be more or less give us a good idea of how much power the card consumes while working. The GTX660 Ti itself is rated for 170w, adding in ASUS’ bit of touch here and there and the additional wattage is quite welcome. These are measurements taken from the wall socket so its the wattage being drawn by the entire PC. Take note that these also peak values and not the average that these cards will consume. To compute how much power is being drawn by the card, we subtract the idle temps from peak temps and some 10 watts and we get a rough idea of how much power the card draws.
We’ve seen before how effective ASUS’ DirectCU II cooler is. This instance is no different. At an idle temperature of 36*C on automatic fan settings, ASUS has certainly did a remarkable job on their cooling solution and thermal management. Loading up the card drives the temps upwards though, sending it right past Palit’s GTX670 Jetstream which makes this card quite the hot one. Curiously enough, the card tops out at 83*C in our tests even on our max OC which you’ll see below.
OVERCLOCKING
This card already comes factory overclocked with a 144Mhz bump to the core clock. Still, we gave it another bump or so with 53Mhz more on the core clock. The card was getting stupidly hotter as we bump up the clocks and we settled for the OC that had the best stability, in this case a final clock of 1112Mhz/1591Mhz core and memory clock. Not bad for something that was sub-Ghz from a reference point of view.
CONCLUSION
We’ll keep things short and sweet for this one; we really loved how the GTX660Ti from ASUS performs out of the box. Compared to ASUS’ own HD7870 solution, this card certainly puts out a more frames giving it the performance advantage in the majority of our tests. That said, our feelings are a bit of a mixed bag on the other aspects of this card.
ASUS’ DirectCUII cooler certainly does its job easily proving it can tame this card to below what our other cards are averaging at. Load temps aren’t as nice as the AMD card from ASUS though as this Kepler-based solution pumps out a good 6*C more heat during load operation. Surprisingly though, even when overclocked the cooler can easily keep the GTX660Ti DCUII TOP at the same temps giving it some more room to wiggle in a few more MHz. As for overclocking, we didn’t manage to go too far with only around 50Mhz on the core clock proving to be our limit. Seeing as this card is already given a 144Mhz factory-OC, that’s pretty understandable.
Pegged currently at Php15,000, the ASUS GTX660 Ti DirectCUII TOP shows off some graphics horsepower edging it to GTX670 territories and definitely above the HD7870, with the latter already butting heads with the HD7950 making it so much easier for the GTX660 Ti to find its sweet spot. At this price point it also contends with a lot of other beefed-up custom GTX660 Ti’s with ASUS flaunting their own personal to touch to appeal to potential buyers.  That said, if you’re gaming mostly for 1920×1080 and want the best card for this price range, we present you the ASUS GTX660 Ti as a top choice if you favor nVidia. With exceptional build quality and cooling, this card is easily a best buy and we give the ASUS GTX660 Ti DirectCUII TOP our Silver Award.
