Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti pops up on Swedish retail sites, to hit stores soon

Nvidia is all set to launch their new mid-range graphics card, the Asus GTX 660 Ti Direct CU II edition, in the sub-Rs. 20K price bracket, and even though they’ve been mum about the whole thing, we’ve managed to get some information about it thanks to a couple of online Swedish retailers. The sites have listed the new card for around 3,350 to 3,551 Swedish Kronor, which roughly translates to Rs. 22,000.

Now, although the card will sell at a more affordable price point in the US and other places, us folk in India - like always - might have to put up with inflated prices when the card hits our shores. Considering the GTX 670 is still retailing for close to Rs. 30K, the GTX 660 Ti might not make it below the sub-Rs. 20k mark right from the get go.

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We’ve also managed to get some specifications thanks to the leak. The GTX 660 Ti will be based on the same 28 nm GK104 die and will also pack in the same number of shaders as the GTX 670, which packs 1,344 shaders. The one area where Nvidia has compromised is the memory bus, which is 192-bit wide instead of 256-bit. However, you still get 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. We expect this card to perform similarly to the GTX 670, but with lower power consumption and a cheaper price tag.

Going by the naming scheme alone, the GTX 660 Ti should be a replacement for the GTX 560 Ti, but that may not be the case given how the specifications are so similar to the GTX 670. The card will most likely launch for a little more than Rs. 20,000 but eventually, over a period of six months or so, should drop to the sub-Rs. 20K mark. Nvidia’s Kepler architecture has really been a game changer for Nvidia as it manages to deliver very good performance while keeping the power consumption down to very manageable levels.

This card is priced a bit high as it is Asus’s special edition card. Standard cards based on the reference design should be a lot cheaper. The stores claim that the card will be available on August 14, so it seems we don’t have to wait too long for an official announcement from Nvidia.