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GTX660/660Ti on PCIe 2.0

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ATMINSIDE

ATMINSIDE

Sim Racing Aficionado Co-Owner
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Joined
Jun 28, 2012
Like the title reads, I'm running PCIe 2.0 x16, but I'm wondering if it will actually bottleneck a 660 or 660Ti.

Looking for an upgrade over the summer, and GPU is one thing being considered.

Only looking at 3GB+ on the card, and I'm pretty nVidia biased (it'd take a miracle for me to get an AMD GPU because of all the past/current driver issues).
 
The answer is No, it will not bottleneck.

If you want 3GB+, I suggest you look for a miracle personally, especially if you are playing games above 1920x1200. Nvidia cards are just not worth the extra cost of that ram and can get bandwidth starved at multiple monitor resolutions. For a single card the drivers are no better/worse than Nvidia's IMO. 7950 3GB would be my choice.
 
ED, I didn't figure it would be bottlenecked, but I wanted to double check on here.

Also, I figure the prices will start dropping a bit in anticipation of the next gen for nVidia since they're supposed to start releasing 7xx this month.

Edit: Which is better for scaling/drivers, SLI or XFire? You said they're about the same for singles.
 
Here is a good link I always drop when I see this question: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

They need to drop a TON for me personally to make it worth it. For the price they are selling now, one can easily get a 7950 with the same memory, much more bandwidth, and overall a lot higher performance. I would imagine you will see pricing from both camps go down in time. To me the large performance difference for the price just doesnt make sense unless the games you play are borked on AMD.
 
That's surprising that neither card sees a performance dip, great link!

How necessary do you think the 3GB is if I'm just running two 1080p monitors? I run games on one at a time, with "stuff" on the other screen. (read: internet, email, monitoring software, etc.) I don't see multimonitor gaming coming for a while as I'm about to finish college and I'll be getting a car/house/everything when I net a job.
 
Not sure what effect the other monitor would have... that said, 2GB is being eclipsed with some games already on a single 1080p... 2GB is fine now and the short term, but I would get 3GB regardless.
 
That's what I thought, and the secondary monitor causes a 2% FPS drop worst case scenario. That was while playing SWTOR, 1-2 FPS lost worst case. Worth it IMO.

I'll watch for a deal on the 660/660Ti/7950, you guys will hear what I come up with :D
 
Like I said, keep an open mind on brands unless you know you have specific issues with games on AMD drivers that the latest one's have not remedied.
 
@ 1080p 2gb will cover you for now, the question is how long into the future? who knows!
there are a few newer games that can utilize more than 2 gb @ 1080 (moded Skyrim, Crysis 3, etc) I don't think anyone has reported huge framerate drops due to Vram limitations for single monitor, 1080p.

I would not expect a second monitor pushing the desktop only would utilize enough vram to make it a problem. If you did notice a problem you could pickup a gt610 for like 30 bucks and run the second monitor off that.

edit, i type too slow ;)
 
I'm definitely hitting my 1GB limit, and you hit me at home for the memory limit because I do run a modded Skyrim XD

Problem with grabbing a cheap GPU for the second monitor, my current motherboard doesn't support SLI, so I'm not sure how it would react. That being said, it won't be too long until an upgrade in that area either. (Depending on how this summer job goes, I might go bigger than just GPU)
 
ATMINSIDE said:
I'm definitely hitting my 1GB limit, and you hit me at home for the memory limit because I do run a modded Skyrim XD

Problem with grabbing a cheap GPU for the second monitor, my current motherboard doesn't support SLI, so I'm not sure how it would react. That being said, it won't be too long until an upgrade in that area either. (Depending on how this summer job goes, I might go bigger than just GPU)
Click to expand...
Another GPU for a different monitor is not SLI/CFx. Its just another card in the system.

Ajay linked a very good post from (Im assuming) Funsoul about GPU vRAM use... :)
 
Ajay, that let me know I'm more than maxing my 1GB, and would get freakin' close to maxing 2GB already! Oh, and I don't really have a want for any of the games with that card, do people buy those game cards like that?

ED, didn't think about that, but its really a moot point anyway. There's no need for me to get a second GPU just for that monitor.
 
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