Hey all, the title is pretty self explanatory. I am looking to upgrade my video card, and I can reasonably afford to spend in the $300-$400 dollar range. I ideally would like to stick near the $300 mark which is why I was leaning towards buying a GTX 660 Ti, but after doing endless amounts of reading I am now slowly convincing myself that it might be worth it to spend the extra $75-$100 to get a GTX 670 instead.

Does anyone/has anyone had enough experience with both to tell me whether the extra performance from a GTX 670 is worth the extra ~$100? Convince me one way or the other. Help!

I only have experience with a GTX 670 that I currently use and not crazy knowledgable about graphics cards and the components within. I can at least say that I found the performance to be really awesome and there's hardly many games that I couldn't play at 1080p (my maximum resolution for my monitor at this time) without giving up a few graphics details. Metro 2033 is one of those games but after finding out that it's apparently poorly optimized in general and that I could still play it on near-max with playable framerates (to me anyway), I feel I can safely recommend this card based on my experience. From what I gather though the 660 Ti must at least be pretty good to handle most games pretty well still even though it's technically one under the 670 without overclocking (oh yea I must mention I never overclock anything so I'm talking about stock performance at all times here).

@Huey2k2: We could use some more information, mainly what resolution you play games at and the other parts your system is made out of.

If you're running a 19" monitor, it might not make a noticeable difference to step up to a 670. The same goes if your processor or RAM is the bottleneck. If you're gaming on a 1080p or better screen and the rest of your system is in order, there's a fair (10-20%) increase in performance when you go to a 670 over a 660, but that's not how you really want to look at it. Go to places like Guru3D, Tom's Hardware and Anandtech, look at the reviews for those two cards, and pick out a game or two that they use for benchmarks that you play often. If the 660 Ti is getting you acceptable performance (again, you need to define what that is. For me, it's 60FPS as high as everything will go, but most people are happy with 45FPS+ at their default resolution without turning much down. I'm also a crazy person who buys pairs of GPUs, so keep that in mind.) then the 670 isn't necessarily worth it right now. Keep in mind, however, that the 670 is going to maintain that performance level a bit longer. How much longer? Hard to say, but it'll probably stretch itself up to a year longer than the 660 Ti will, assuming a new version of DirectX doesn't come out and everything starts using that for all of the best shiny graphics.

If $100 is worth the performance boost in current games that you play, the possibility of delaying an upgrade by a year (max), and your system can take advantage of the extra oomph, I say go for it.

@Mirado: My desktops native resolution is 1920x1200

I am currently running an i5 2500k, the rest of my specs aren't really that important. I am currently using a GTS 450 and my GPU is bottlenecking me hard on almost any game I play, so anything will be a noticeable upgrade for me regardless.

I am mostly buying a new GPU so I can actually play games like Farcry 3 and Planetside 2 without having to run them on the lowest settings humanly possible. Part of me was leaning towards the GTX 670 because I am playing at 1920x1200 instead of just 1080p, I don't want to have to upgrade my video card for a couple years.

For the record I just built a new system and got a PNY reference model 670 for $280 after rebate, so if price is the biggest factor deals can be found.

@Huey2k2: At 1920x1200, go 670 all the way. With a 2500k you'll have no problem taking advantage of it. Hell, I'd suggest a 680 at that point: Far Cry 3 turned all the way up taxes my two 6950s to the point that I just barely hold onto 60FPS most of the time, making me wonder about the future myself.

But, assuming you don't want to plonk $450 down on a card, the 670 is absolutely the way to go. That poor 660TI will be overtaxed from day one and you'll be scaling a bunch of stuff back to maintain good FPS at 1920x1200.