Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
At £200 this overclocked Asus GTX 660 Ti DCU II Top would be a great graphics card, but with it being offered for the same price as the far superior GTX 670 it's completely irrelevant. Even the EVGA GTX 660 Ti SC with its £260 price tag, is too much, losing out to the slightly faster HD 7950 at the same price.
It's not like this is a new precedent either. If it all seems rather familiar then your GPU memory is impressive, we salute you. Almost the exact same situation arose when Nvidia was getting into the mainstream segment of its first generation Fermi cards.
After the GTX 470 came the GTX 465. It was the using the same GPU, but cut out a lot of the chip's innate goodness, and Nvidia positioned it only slightly cheaper than the much faster GTX 470. It was roundly panned as a pointless release and was superseded in around a month by the fantastic GTX 460 and its new GF104 GPU.
We can only hope the same thing happens here and we'll see a new Kepler GPU, specifically designed for the mainstream segment, in the GTX 660 without the Ti moniker. And for a more mainstream price. Seriously, when did £300 become the mainstream pricing for graphics cards?
Nvidia needs to step outside and smell the global recession.
We liked
The only positive thing we can say about this Asus GTX 660 Ti DCU II Top card is the fact the cooling solution is impressive - being at both times quiet and effective. But that's not something the GTX 660 Ti can generally boast.
We disliked
It's running the same GPU as the top-tier Kepler cards, but with so much being chopped out or pared back it lacks any of the punch of its big brothers.
That wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't priced so high. Nvidia has the reference price starting at £250 so it's no surprise the factory-overclocked solutions are priced high, but they're then encroaching on GTX 670 territory.
But only in price, not performance.
Verdict
It's not Asus' fault this card is so irrelevant - you can't make a silk purse from a lame GPU. The starting point of the Nvidia GTX 660 Ti is such a weak one there's nowhere you can go but down.
It's a weak GPU with a stupidly high price tag. Avoid and hope the mainstream is catered for properly with an upcoming GTX 660 without the Ti tag.
