Conclusion
Nvidia promised the GeForce GTX 660 Ti to be a graphics card that is ideally suited to gamers who play on a single full hd screen. After our extensive tests, we have to agree. With the exception of Metro 2033 all games we tested with are eminently playable at full hd resolution using high quality settings. Often the best possible settings combined with 4x AA still resulted in playable frame rates. If you want sufficient performance in full hd under any circumstance at any setting, you still have to dig deeper into your wallet for a card like the GTX 680. If you don't mind to occasionally turn down the settings just a little, the GTX 660 Ti is an excellent choice.
The price-performance ratio can be summed up as just great. The GTX 660 Ti offers much more bang for the buck than either the GTX 670 or the GTX 680. More importantly, the card on average is about 16% faster than the similarly priced Radeon HD 7870. The recently improved Radeon HD 7950 Boost appears to be about as fast, but is, at least for the moment, more expensive. Like we said, should AMd opt for a pricing war, due to the GTX 660's smaller GPU the winner is known in advance.
As long as we do not know the final pricing, it is hard to state which of the tested GTX 660 Ti's is the better choice. EVGA's model is rather loud and for that reason alone would not be our first choice. ASUS' cooler definitely is the quietest, while the Top-edition is the fastest if you do not overclock. MSI's model however performed best when overclocked, but it is well possible we just had a good sample.
When retail prices become clear and we have tested a few more GTX 660 Ti models, we can advise you on which of the various brands should be the one to get. For now we can already state that if you are in the market for a good graphics card to game at full hd resolution, the GTX 660 Ti is the best option at this time.
