Benchmarks: Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2

Testing Battlefield 3 at 1680x1050 revealed that the GeForce GTX 650 Ti was capable of 43fps, making it 19% faster than the Radeon HD 7770 and 59% faster than the 7750, while it was also 10% faster than the 6870.

Turning the resolution up to 1920x1200 we find that the GeForce GTX 660 Ti was able to average 60fps, making it 7% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 and just 2% slower than the 7950. Meanwhile the GeForce GTX 660 was able to average 51fps, making it 9% slower than the Radeon HD 7870 and 13% faster than the 7850.

The GeForce GTX 680 averaged a comfortable 74fps, allowing it to match the Radeon HD 7970 while it was 11% slower than the 7970 GHz Edition. The GeForce GTX 670 was just as impressive averaging 67fps, allowing it to beat the Radeon HD 7950 by a 10% margin, though it was 3% slower than the 7950 Boost edition.

At 2560x1600 the GeForce GTX 680 was now 2% slower than the Radeon HD 7970 and 12% slower than the 7970 GHz Edition. Surprisingly the GeForce GTX 670 was able to improve its performance when compared to the Radeon competition at 2560x1600, matching the Radeon HD 7950 Boost while beating the standard 7950 by an 11% margin.

Our Borderlands 2 benchmark hits a serious CPU bottleneck at 1680x1050 with mid to high-end graphics cards. That said it did not impact the GeForce GTX 650 Ti which averaged just 53fps, and yet despite this it was still 22% faster than the Radeon HD 6870, 59% faster than the 7770 and 97% faster than the 7750.

Again even at 1920x1200 the CPU bottleneck is still present when using mid to high-end graphics cards. There was virtually no difference in performance between the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards and this was also the case with the GeForce GTX 670 and Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards.

Although the GeForce GTX 660 Ti appeared to be limited by the CPU bottleneck it was still 11% faster than the 7870. The GeForce GTX 660 also seemed to be bottlenecked by the CPU, limiting it to 72fps, though despite this it was still 9% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 and 24% faster than the 7850.

Now at 2560x1600 the CPU bottleneck is no longer an issue as the GPU's are now the weakest link. The GeForce GTX 680 still managed an impressive 69fps, making it 19% faster than the Radeon HD 7970 and 6% faster than the 7970 GHz Edition. The GeForce GTX 670 also did well beating the Radeon HD 7950 by a 23% margin.