The Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 is a boosting & a good graphics card, well cooled and silent. The new architecture Nvidia Kepler is here put in the spotlight in a card efficient and not too expensive.
Powerful, quiet and well cooled, this graphics card of Gigabyte is very compelling. It just attacks the Radeon HD 7870 from AMD in the card segment less than 230 euros and managed to win.
The promise
After the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is relatively upscale to attack the Nvidia graphics card market with the mid-range GeForce GTX 660. We got our hands on the graphics card Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660, whose components are boosted home and enjoy a cooling touted as efficient and-above all-very quiet.
Reality
Mid-range model, the Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 costs between 220 and 230 euros depending on the shops. Relatively small (24.2 cm), it has high quality components whose frequencies were increased by Gigabyte to boost performance. Result, it is possible to play without problem all the latest video games at the time (II Borderlands, Darksiders II Dishonored or) on a 24 inch high definition. The two fans that provide cooling are very efficient and really quiet. GPU temperature does not exceed 57 ° C when playing for long hours, a great feat.
A good performance-watt consumed
This card was tested with games including Dirt 2 and 3, Resident Evil 5, Batman or High Definition STALKER (1920 points 1080 pixels), with all the details at the top (or close) the Gigabyte displays between 65 and 190 frames per second depending on the complexity of 3D scenes and games to display. To power the card it uses a single dose of PCI-Express 6-pin only.
Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 consumes between 10 and 15 watts at rest, when it is not requested by a game, however, when you use its services, it is able to consume up to 136 watts. It is almost 60 watts less than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti and 10 watts more than the Radeon HD 7870.
An effective doping
Nvidia GK106 chip has sailed under the fan 960 CUDA cores whose frequency has been pushed to 1033 MHz. And, thanks to the Nvidia GPU Boost technology, the chip can even reach 1098 MHz in certain conditions. Side memory, Gigabyte keeps operating frequencies recommended by Nvidia (3004 MHz) 2 GB of GDDR5 card. The card is compatible with PCI-Express 3.0, but can of course be connected to the PCI-Express 2.0 or 2.1 without any problems. At the back of the card, there are two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort output. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 compares the Radeon HD 7850 from AMD. While on paper, the comparison holds up, prices actually position the GTX 660 against the Radeon HD 7870. Faced with the first, the GeForce is a box full, no doubt. The AMD chip is distanced from the first tests. Similarly with the Radeon HD 7870 & the GeForce GTX 660 from Gigabyte is widening the gap. It displays between 3 and 32 frames per second more than the standard model AMD. However, when the card returns to its original frequencies, both cards are almost neck to neck with a small advantage for the Radeon HD 7870. Now compare the GeForce GTX 660 and GeForce GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 460. Faced with its two older sisters, the newcomer is doing very well. It provides an average of 60% more performance than the GTX 460 and 30 to 40% more than the GTX 560.
The verdict
The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 is boosted a good graphics card, well cooled and silent. Thanks to its components spiked it remotely Radeon HD 7850 and 7870 for a decent price. Very good replacement for the GeForce GTX 460, it’s a safe bet that it makes a place in the configurations of players tied to Nvidia technologies.
This was all about the Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 graphics card whose price is around € 229.
