My 660 GTX Experience

[zacharyt1122]

For years now I've been using my very old Core 2 quad machine as my primary gaming system. I've been wanting to upgrade very badly, but I wasn't 100% convinced that it was worth upgrading just yet. It started off a beast of a machine with dual 8800 GTX's, then after those bit the dust a single GTS 250 took over the graphics power. It did the job, barely sometimes as I tried but mostly failed to play the Witcher 2, and it couldn't even start a game like Crysis 3. I was about to bite the bullet and go for a whole new machine but after reading the GTX 660 review on this site I decided to try for a new GPU to tide me over for a little longer. Boy was it worth putting off a little longer.

As luck would have it I had enough miles for a $200 gift card from my bank for Amazon. I was going to bite the bullet and get a 660 Ti, but the Gigabyte 660 GTX reviewed on Techgage was on sale for $189 and free shipping (no tax, nice) AND a $20 MIR. So basically I was going to be paid $11 to use a new video card. Even nicer. So after a grueling 5 day wait my 660 showed up, and at first I wasn't expecting mind blowing results, but lets just say every game plays just fine maxed out, Battlefield, Tomb Raider, Crysis, no slider left behind, no detail left off. Granted I still game on a rather small 1440x900 monitor, but I hooked it up to my 1080 TV and it played Tomb Raider perfectly at 1080 with a few details turned off.

Sorry for the long post, but I was just happy with my purchase, partly thanks to the review here. I'm going to eventually build a new PC (preferably sometime next year after the new consoles are out, just to make sure I'm way ahead of the game.) But for now I'm in no rush. And to top it all off, Amazon was running a promo giving away Splinter Cell Blacklist with the purchase of a new card. It just got better and better

 

[Rob Williams]

$11 for a new GPU! Nothing to complain about that, haha! Glad you're happy with the purchase

Interestingly, our friends over at Legit Reviews just did a comparo between a Q6600 and 4770K to show the differences in upgrading from one generation to like... five later? Some of the results are pretty shocking: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2247/1/

It's REALLY cool to hear that your C2Q machine handles 1080p fine for those higher-end games though. That really was a fantastic Intel generation.

 

[zacharyt1122]

That was a good read. It's interesting how much faster the new Core i series is than the old C2Q, despite having similar clock speeds. I have a QX6700, which I OC'd moderately to 3.5 GHz, and it seems to pull its own weight.

Tom's Hardware did a similar review, but it focused more on gaming, which is pretty much all I do outside of web surfing or downloading. The old C2Q's beat out most the newer 2 core i processors in most gaming tests, so its kinda similar to the old adage "theres no replacement for displacement."

I still feel the age in my system, but I'm just really excited for the future of processors. I think I'm going to hold out for Intel to get some really nice 8 cores in the mix before I really jump ship.