This card is part of the relatively new 600 series line up of cards from Nvidia. This card was released to place itself perforamnce wise in the gap between the 7870 and 7950 from AMD/ATI and the price fits accordingly. I actually was able to pick mine up for about $240 refurbished and for the roughly 2 months so far I have had it, I have had no problems. It comes in a nifty box with a few Molex adapters and well sealed inner case. Specs are on par with those of the GTX 670 and overclocking this little baby can easily keep on par with the 670 (granted the 670 being at stock speeds mind you) for a much lower price. Though one key difference which can make or break this card in the future is the Memory Bandwidth Bus size which is cut down from 256-bits on the 680 & 670 to 192-bits on the 660ti, but more on this later. The Cooling design is tried and true, continuing a fairly long lineage of quality MSI overclocking cooling and is amply adequate even with the new power design.
PC BUILD:
Phenom II X4 3.6ghz (oldie but a goodie)
4gb 1333mhz RAM
1tb 7200RPM HD
Antec 620W PSU
Asus Mini-ATX Mobo
The card is very very strong, most any PC title out there, even the brutal of the brutal Metro 2033 or Battlefield 3 can be turned onto very high (with low AA for metro) at 1080p and maintain a framerate hovering 30-40 FPS for Metro and 50-70 for BF3 MP, even when in tense situations. As for games like Starcraft II, Diablo 3, Planetside 2, Portal 2, MMO's like Guild wars 2 and most any other title that is great looking but not blistering is easily comfortable past the 60FPS mark or around on all the highest settings available. Be aware though that your CPU plays a role in certain titles, especially Guild wars 2 and World of Warcraft for instance where the game will be more dependent on your CPU than GPU (sadly for me and my Phenom II!).
As for Overclocking it couldn't be better, the ability to bring up the Power Limit is actually very novel to me. It allows to raise the bar of the cards power draw much higher than the standard regulated settings, this is a god send for overclocking especially when they provided such excellent cooling and went the extra mile with great cooling for the RAM chips on board as well. This allows you to raise your overclocks to unprecedented levels, I was able to maintain a 75mhz increase on the core and 300mhz on the Mem chips and keep it stable. Granted I didn't want to push around this card too hard since mine was a refurb and I didn't really even need the extra performance yet, I'm sure it can go farther. As for temps, they almost boggle my mind, now keep in mind I keep an open case but when I was playing Metro 2033 the other day it would only get up to the mid 60's with fairly aggressive fan ramping (which btw is pleasently quiet for a GPU of this caliber).
But not all is perfect in paradise. As mentioned previous the Memory Bus is at around 192-bits in contrast to 256-bits on the 660ti's older brothers. When this is really felt is when you use optical effects such as AA in higher quantities, the need for more ram (at 2GB's most any gamer is solid with this) and the speed and bus size at which the memory interface operates. I game at 1080p so this issue doesn't affect me much, I add plenty of AA in most games (except heavy games such as Metro 2033 for this reason) 8x or more, but if you plan to game at higher than 1080p resolutions or want to add AA and other bells and whistles in more demanding titles this card will fall short of cards such as the 7870. This bus size issue can be offset to a certain degree by the sheer overclockability of the RAM but it is not enough to truly compensate.
Overall though, the card can churn out the frames and FPS, most gamers in the lower high end court should definitly look into this card especially for it's attractive comparative price. The 7870 is a great value as well as the 7950 if you are looking for alternatives in the near ballpark of 660ti. All of which I recommend as well!
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Allows HDMI for my TV as monitor and able to play any game I want @ High Res w/no frame chop
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2013
I love that this allowed to turn my PC into an HDMI device for my TV so I could use my 46in flat screen TV asa monitor and play games on. I used to be able to do that, but I had to use2 connections, a VGA port on the TV and and an audio connection. Now with HDMI it carries video and audio over one connection, much easier!I have also been able to play every game I have tried on max graphics display (high Res) with no frame delay or chop!The only thing that sucked was my power supply wasn't good enough for it, so I had to buy a dedicated power supply for it that fit in a CDROM bay. If you have an HP Elite or something that has proprietary hardware, you will likely have to do the same thing because I couldn't just upgrade the main power supply. Here;s a link to the dedicated graphics card power supply I bought. I did a lot of research and this is the best one for the $ as of March 2013. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002IZE5RE/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2013
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