Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Performance

If we are looking at the performance of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti as a GPU, rather than the specific retail-ready cards we are looking at here, a good summary was found in our first GTX 660 Ti review:

If you are gaming at 1080p or below then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti makes a lot more sense – better performance AND a better price.  The NVIDIA option is going for $50 less than the AMD card today and with the Borderlands 2 pack in that KIND OF brings the price down to $249.  Kind of.  And once we get these overclocked retail cards full tested we'll see if anything changes – a 1019 or 1033 MHz base clock could make a world of difference.  (And note MSI and Galaxy are both telling me their overclocked models will sell for $309.)

In general, with clock improvements ranging from 65 MHz (EVGA) to 113 MHz (Zotac), all of these $309 graphics cards are worth the $10 price difference in my opinion.  We saw performance gains basically in line with the clock speed increases across the board with the only real stand out in the set of four being the Zotac AMP! Edition card that included an out of the box overclock of the memory bus – from 6.0 GHz to 6.6 GHz.  That increase in memory bandwidth resulted in another 5-8% performance gain at 1080p and 2560×1600 resolutions in games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Batman: Arkham City – but little in Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Could the other three cards have had their memory clock set at that level to see the same boost?  More than likely yes, but that isn't what they shipped with.

Overclocking and Other Factors

While we already discussed the overclocking intricacies on the previous page, it is worth noting again that three of these graphics cards really had stand out cooler configurations: MSI, Galaxy and Zotac all used custom solutions that kept the GeForce GTX 660 Ti GPU cool and quiet – something that the EVGA Superclocked card just couldn't keep up with. 

Pricing and Availability

As of this writing, all four of these cards are selling for $309 (though MSI has a rebate bringing the cost down to $299):

While you really can't go wrong with ANY of these options, we obviously have our favorites today…

Final Thoughts

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a great GPU, and as such we found all four of these retails cards to be worthy of purchases.  If you already bought one and it's on the way you really don't need to worry about any kind of returns. You'll be happy with the performance.  That being said, the Zotac AMP! Edition gets my nod as the best of the bunch with its higher GPU clock speeds, and overclocked memory speeds resulting in an out-of-box experience that is a little better than the rest. 

Both Galaxy and MSI GTX 660 Ti cards offer outstanding cooling with low noise levels, and should be overclockable to the same settings as the Zotac card if you are willing to do it manually.  EVGA's $309 version just feels a bit lacking with the "stock" cooler, higher temps and low overclocked settings.  Still, EVGA is known to have one of the best communities and support groups (and warranties) in the graphics card world, not to mention supporting the gaming world with Precision X. 

Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition

MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Edition, Galaxy GeForce GTX 660 Ti GC

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