EVGA GeForce GTX 660 2GB SuperClocked Review Video Card   Page 1

Reviewer: Chris Ledenican Article Publish Date: 9/13/2012

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

Continuing our look at the newest Kepler product; the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 we were also able to get our hands on an EVGA SuperClocked model in.

 

As the name suggests this model comes with clocks speeds that exceed the reference specification, as it has a target GPU Boost clock speed of 1111MHz, which is 7.5% faster than the reference spec. This is of course going to ensure it runs faster than the standard models, but as with all Kepler based graphics cards we expect it to boost higher than 1111MHz in non-TDP applications. The memory hasn’t been tweaked though, meaning it runs at 2GB of memory at 6000MHz quad-data rate on a 192-bit bus.

 

Nvidia is really expecting the GTX 660 to be a hot commodity when it hits the market, because their internal research shows many gamers are currently on a 3 to 4 year upgrade path. The reason this is important is because one of the widely used graphics cards is still the Nvidia 8800 GT, which was originally launched in October 2007 and priced from $199-$249. The fact that so many gamers still use this card means many of them are due for an update and the Nvidia GTX 660 falls right into their price range.

 

What would this upgrade give the end users though? Well, aside from DX11 support, Nvidia’s own internal number crunching shows the GTX 660 has over 4x the performance of the 9800GT, and even 2.5x the performance of the GTX 460, so this would be no small upgrade for anyone switching over from one of those models.