Just bought a 660 Ti. Worse performance than my 6870. What's going on?

Just upgraded from a Radeon 6870. Games have worse performance now with the 660 Ti. (EVGA 2GB 660Ti (non-superclocked))

I uninstalled everything related to AMD before installing this new card.

Here's my specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
Core i7-950 @ 3.8ghz
6GB DDR3
2GB 660 Ti (306.23 drivers)
750W Corsair PSU
Intel 80GB SSD (SSD is the OS, games are on a 250GB HDD)

So far every game I've played has worse performance than I was having with the 6870. If anyone can help me out, I would truly appreciate it. Right now I'm in a bit of shock, getting this card and expecting to see an improvement, only to see something awful.


I've used the 306.23 drivers, AND the 305.68 drivers with no luck. I've played with the Control Panel settings, and no luck.

Here's a picture of me playing GW2, Nvidia Control Panel set to PERFORMANCE, and the in-game settings on LOW.

51FPS. I get 51FPS with everything on Ultra also. Same thing in GTAV, whether the settings are on low or high, the same awful FPS.

Here's GW2 with Nvidia Control Panel set to QUALITY, and the in-game settings on high, minus shadows:

46fps, not a large difference from running the game on the lowest possible.

I know the 660 Ti is a great card, so I want to get this resolved, I'd appreciate any help.

One thing I would like to note, in any game I've played so far, the GPU does not reach 100% power, or usage. It usually hovers around 50-70%.

Another image, not sure if it's helpful:

 

First of all welcome to the green team!

Second of all let me help you here real quick, I have come to the green team after YEARS of being with ATI Radeon, and I've hit my head straight into the wall encountering exactly the same issue, and I was just torn apart by madness.

And then some random guy here on Guru3d posted the solution and I've been happy since then, what you want to do is this:

1.Download and install latest WHQL drivers, NOT the BETA ones, but WHQL!
2.Open Nvidia settings from the bottom right of your screen
3.Click Manage 3D settings under 3D settings tab
4.Select Global settings
5.Set your global settings to these:
Ambient occlusion-off
Anisotropic filtering-application controlled
Antialiasing-FXAA - off
Antialiasing-gamma correction - on
Antialiasing- mode- application controlled
Antialiasing-setting- app. controlled
Antialiasing trasparency- off
CUDA GPU's- All
Maximum pre-rendered frames-1(if games feel choppy set to 2 or 3 maximum)
Multi-diplay/mixed-GPU acceleration- SINGLE display performance(if using more than one monitor use MULTIPLE display performance)
Power managment mode - Adaptive
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization - off
Tex. filtering-negative LOD bias - allow
tex. filtering-quality- set to quality
tex. filtering trilinear optimization - on
threaded optimization- AUTO
triple buffering - off
vertical sync- use the 3d app. setting

Once you've set these settings you want to go to Program settings tab in the same window under manage 3D settings(next to global settings), there you should find your games ONE BY ONE and set under every game power managment mode to maximum performance!

Once you've done all these steps please be kind and take your time to tell us if it helped.

Also if anyone else can recommend anything better PLEASE DO SO!

EDIT: When I launched GW2 for the first time after installing GTX 680 I've had like 40 fps max, after changing these settings I have no problems whatsoever hitting over 90 FPS...

EDIT2: Dont forget to hit the Apply tab it happened to me more then once!

 

Thanks for the help Mraz. Unfortunately, the problem persists. Followed your help exactly as you said, and with no luck.

Actually, interestingly enough GW2 won't go higher than 40fps after those changes. GTAIV has no change at all.

 

Have you hit the maximum performance under power managment under ''program selection''.

If you did all of the above as I can see you said you did, I can only recommend restarting the PC once you did all the above, since this must be the solution, as I've seen others telling the same to newcomers who had performance issues with the games.

As far as GW2 last thing I can recommend that you make sure you run the game under unlimited frame cap, on graphic settings you want to, and under resolution tab use the option full screen windowed mode, since that game has a lot of problems, and when I'm using a resolution such as 1920*1080p game wont go over 50 FPS for me, maybe that's the problem. But when running under full screen windowed mode it hits over 90 FPS easily.

Here's my FPS shot

 

Tried everything you said, still a no-go.

Question I have though. Is it possible one of my power connectors to the video card isn't fully connected? I have both of the connectors stretched pretty hard. Would that cause performance issues if there was a connection issue, or would it be BSOD/crash-worthy?

EDIT: Nevermind, power connectors are fine.

 

I would definetly re-post something a few hours later, cuz its almost 5 AM in Europe now, so that as much as people can see this post and hopefully reply to you.

I am sorry I am out of ideas about this, since you have more than capable CPU and more than enough power in PSU...

 

Double post, sry!

Try this I just tried it out, and I went over 140 FPS with it...

Set all in game graphic options to maximum!

But...set these to...

In game reflections- terrain and sky only
Shadows-low
shaders- low

I've noticed minimal difference between low and max on shadows and shaders in terms of look quality, but massive FPS gains(around 30), and 10 fps gains with reflections, making it a total of over 40 FPS gain on my 90 making it a solid 130 FPS+ it varies while moving...

 

Coffee, download Driver Fusion and run it to remove any lingering AMD driver files/registry entries. Then reboot and retest. In some cases, remaining registry entries can cause performance issues.

 

Did that, it found a load of files. Deleted and rebooted. Still not fixed. Games still laggy.

Friend tested his 6870 and saw his GPU load in GW2 was also at 50%, so that's gotta be unrelated. All in all, my 660 Ti is still really slow for some reason.

If you guys need more information, screenshots or whatnot just let me know and I'll get them.

 

try resitting the gpu and unplugging and replugging the power cords to it.

MMo's are general not the best games to gauge performance of cards on. And last I hear GTAIV have performance issue with 3xx. series drivers or so i keep hearing people say anyway

 

Yeah try some more games.
GTA IV is one of the most poorly optimized console ports around - def not a good way to gauge GPU performance.

 

Hi, you could also post a screenshot of GPU-Z.

I've encountered this before and found that my card was not running at full x16 speed because it was not seated properly.

 

I understand GTAIV is a bad port, but there's just no way it should be running worse than my 6870, makes no sense. I've seen Youtube videos with people who have the Enhancer mod on Very High with a 660 and it runs 30-60fps.

I made sure the card was seated properly, and hooked up right, it was fine. I tested out Skyrim on Ultra settings and the game was 50-60FPS. While that's perfectly playable, I would have expected more, as my friend who has a GTX 570 not only runs his copy on Ultra, but also has loads of mods installed and still never goes below 60FPS.

Borderlands 2 ran 50-60FPS. The Radeon 6870 also ran it at 50-60FPS, so not sure if this test was useful.

 

in the NVCP go to the GTA4 profile and select maximum performance and test again
I am going to ask you to download heaven 3.0 google it, and select your resolution, 8x aa, 16x af and normal tess and note the gpu usage, you should be around 99%

 

Well, thanks for posting the GPU-Z screenshot.

I see no problems there.

You said that GPU usage never reaches 100%, only hovers around 50-70% so perhaps the card is not throttling all the way up to 915-980 mhz?

Have you tried enabling GPU core monitoring on the OSD to see if the GPU core is using full 3D clock speeds?

 

Well the card is about the same as your 6870. Actually the 6870 has a higher pixel fill rate. A LOT of games are fill rate limited, so the 6870 will have better performance. The only games were the 660Ti would do better is very shader heavy games, and even then you might only see 5-10% better performance.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=670&card2=635

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/540?vs=647

 

That really blows my mind. When I got the 6870, I was told its equivalent was similar to a GTX 460. Two generations later, and there's no performance boost at all, in fact, it's worse in some games?

That... I don't even.

EDIT: TK, thanks for that link. So while some games will perform nearly the same, there is an overall improvement, good to see.

I keep seeing posts about how fantastic the 660 Ti is. People say "Runs everything I throw at it on Ultra". I'm guessing these people just switched from a 8800GT and they are too caught up to realize it's just a mediocre card?

 

your 660ti is much faster overall. do what I said earlier

 

Yah it is a bit faster or should be... I didn't look at benchmarks first and was thinking of a different card. When I looked up the raw specs they looked pretty similar.

Maybe it's just specifically the games your trying. You tried any other games to see if you have a performance increase?