The graphics card accelerator of Nvidia the year before last of the middle level with good technical specifications and affordable price is the GTX 660. The characteristics of this solution, as well as its capabilities, will be detailed and considered in the future.
Product niche
Entry-level solutions in the 600th series of graphics accelerators from NVidia included motherboards with an index of 650. They provided a minimum level of performance, which made it quite comfortable to play in most applications in 2012.
Decisions based on the GeForce GTX 660 were located a notch higher. The characteristics of the technical plan of this product indicated that in this case a greater number of computing modules were involved, clock speeds and memory bandwidth were increased. All this allowed in most gaming applications to get a significant increase in both speed and performance. Decisions based on the GTX660 Ti were positioned even higher. In this case, the specifications were even better, and the performance was higher. The direct competitor from the AMD camp for this accelerator was the Radeon HD7850.
Equipment
Modest configuration against the background of more productive devices in the GeForce GTX 660. Features Once again, this is confirmed: a mid-range graphics adapter cannot have exclusive accessories as standard. This list includes:
- graphic accelerator with installed active cooling system;
- driver disk;
- user's manual;
- warranty card.
In more advanced devices, this list can be expanded with special adapters for assembling a PC with several graphic adapters and patch cords for organizing additional power supply for the video card. If necessary, all this will have to be purchased separately for an additional fee. In the case of constructing a computing system with one graphics accelerator, the above list will be more than enough.
Video device specifications
The code name for the graphic chip is GK 106 Kepler. The processor itself is produced according to the standards of 28 nm technological process. More than 2.5 million transistors are part of the GTX 660 silicon crystal. The technical specifications of its frequency potential indicate 960 MHz (basic mode) and 1033 MHz (TurboClock mode with improved performance). The number of shader units in this case is 960, and TMU texturing units per pipeline account for 80. In turn, the units for performing rasterization operations (their abbreviated designation ROP) are 24. At the hardware level, this video card supports DirectX version 11.1, and the maximum The version of the supported PCI Express 16X is 3.0.
Memory subsystem
Only NVIDIA GTX 660 can work with DDR5 memory chips. The characteristics of this solution indicate their operating frequency of 6008 MHz. Some manufacturers initially sell accelerated accelerator modifications with an initially increased frequency. The RAM bus has a bit capacity of 192 bits, and its theoretical throughput is 144 GB / s.
The maximum amount of RAM in this case is 2 GB. In practice, you can also find solutions with 1 GB of RAM, but in this case, the performance of the graphics subsystem is very, very much reduced.
Overclocking capabilities and increased productivity
Some manufacturers, for example, PALIT, equipped their solutions based on this chip with an improved cooling system. Such a constructive solution made it possible to increase the initial clock frequencies of the GPU and RAM. For the first of these, these values โโwere set to 1006 MHz instead of 960 MHz for the most economical mode and 1072 MHz instead of 1033 MHz for the most complex tasks. That is, in this case, this accelerator operates in the "factory" acceleration mode.
In turn, the RAM in such a device operates at a frequency of 6108 MHz. For the basic mode, this figure is 6008 MHz. All the previously mentioned values โโin practice allow to obtain a 5-7% increase in performance. Such overclocking using special application software is available on almost every product with such a semiconductor chip.
Competing Products
The GTX 560 was replaced by the GTX 660. Specifications indicate their apparent continuity. Higher in performance in this generation of graphics adapters is the GTX 660Ti, and lower is the GTX 650Ti Boost. As far as AMD products are concerned, it is most correct, as noted earlier, to compare this product with HD 7850.
Testing
The most interesting test results can be seen in Battlefield 3. This toy is optimized for NVidia video cards, including the GTX 660. Its characteristics are very different from the representative of the previous generation - the GTX 560. But support for DirectX 11.1 in this case allows you to get a serious performance boost. For the hero of this review in FullHD mode, the average number of frames per second is 47, and for the previous solution this number is only 37. In turn, the closest competitor from AMD in the person of HD 7850 can boast only an average of 41 frames per second. This situation persists in most gaming applications that are optimized specifically for the NVidia accelerator.
This list includes "Crisis 2" and "Hard Reset." If the game prefers solutions from AMD, then the situation is radically changing. For example, DIRT: Showdown allows you to get 58 frames per second on the HD 7850, and the GTX 660 in this case can give out only 43. Therefore, you must initially decide on a list of toys that will run on a PC, see their optimization for video cards of one or another manufacturer and only then buy the selected product: HD 7850 or NVidia GTX 660. The characteristics and cost are almost the same, and these are products of almost the same class. But optimization in some cases allows you to get a significant performance boost.
Accelerator cost and owners opinion
$ 200-270 - the price of the GeForce GTX 660 was in this range. The technical characteristics of this solution were improved by some manufacturers with the help of factory overclocking. As a result, their speed was higher, and the price was higher. The rest is a great mid-range accelerator for its time. He allowed to launch most of the toys in 2012. Now there are more demanding gaming applications that are on such
card may come with problems. It is from this position that the owners characterize this accelerator.
Summary
An excellent combination of price and performance are the strengths of the GTX 660. The characteristics of this video card for 2012 allowed the owner of such a PC to run any program without any problems. And even now, a similar picture has been preserved in most cases. An exception in this regard are only the most demanding toys. In this case, you need to degrade the quality of the displayed image and only after that get an acceptable Game Play.