The graphics card industry is one of the fastest moving – with Nvidia and AMD battling it out for the performance crown and more importantly, sales. Today we are looking at the brand new Asus GTX 660 TI Direct CU II TOP which features a custom two fan cooling solution and pre-overclocked speeds. How does the new solution fit into the market? Is it worth an upgrade?
Nvidia enjoyed huge sales with their ‘mid range' performance oriented GTX460 and GTX560 video cards and they are hoping to recreate the same success story with their latest GTX660 Ti. That said, the GTX 660 Ti is not targeting the same sub £200 market.
We don't imagine the punter who originally bought the GTX460 will be able to afford the GTX660 ti. Our contacts at etailers are claiming (before launch) that the ‘cheapest' GTX660 Ti will be priced at £249 inc. vat, with overclocked solutions priced right up to £280 inc vat.
At this price the GTX 660 Ti will be going head to head against AMD's HD7950.
This card ships with the lovely Direct CU II metal cooler with multiple heatpipes and dual fan configuration. How does the Asus Geforce GTX670 Direct CU II TOP stack up?
Product | Nvidia GTX670 | Asus 660 Ti Direct CU II TOP | Nvidia GTX680 | AMD HD7970 |
Transistors | 3540m | 3540m | 3540m | 4310m |
Core Clock | 915 mhz+ | 1059 mhz+ | 1006mhz+ | 925mhz |
Memory clock | 1,502mhz | 1,502mhz | 1502mhz | 1375mhz |
Shaders | 1344 | 1344 | 1536 | 2048 |
ROPs | 32 | 24 | 32 | 32 |
Memory | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | 3GB |
Memory bus width | 256 bit | 192 bit | 256 bit | 384 bit |
The Asus GTX 660 TI Direct CU II TOP is clocked at 1,059mhz core, with a turbo boost speed of 1,137mhz. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective), and is connected via a 192 bit memory interface.