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GeForce GTX 660 Graphics Cards Roundup (Part 1)

4/26/2013 11:37:13 AM

Today we are talking about three completely different graphics cards from EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI, which are going to compete for the title of the fastest, the quietest and the coolest GeForce GTX 660.

We tested the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 graphics card from Zotac. We realized it was a good solution which eventually became widely used, its retail price fell to the recommended level ($229) and even lower. This type of price has been popular among end-users, each graphics card makers has released not only a copy of the source GeForce GTX 660 but also two or three or even eight variations so that people could flexibly choose what suits them. There are some really interesting products with original coolers and increased clock rates. That is about GeForce GTX 660s which we are telling you in this review. They are products coming from the famous EVGA Corporation, Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International.

Products joining in the tests

EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 (02G-P4-2663-KR)

EVGA has made a record creating variations based on the GeForce GTX 660. This company offered eight models at the time when this review was written. Having price range from $239 to $279, these products differ in coolers, clock rates and memory capacity. To carry out the test, we chose an EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 plus 2GB of memory.

Its compact cardboard box is designed in a simple style. You can see main product-related information, including the kind and capacity of memory, on the front of the box.

On the back, you can see a list of compatible technologies, accessories, video interfaces and awards achieved by the product. The graphics card is, moreover, covered into antistatic and soft packs inside the box. It comes with one DVI->D-Sub adapter, power adapter (two PATA->one 6-pin plug), one CD with drivers and EVGA Precision X, one EVGA sticker, one installation guide and one couple of leaflets.

The card is manufactured in China. Its recommended and retail prices are nearly the same ($239 and $235), coming with a 3-year warranty.

Accessories

Accessories

The EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 isn’t eye-catching, yet its cramped design is uniquely attractive. The plastic case with two sunken fans has titanium-like layer and the SIG2 abbreviation in the top right corner.

Cooling system

Cooling system

Circuitry

Circuitry

On the reverse side, we can see a short PCB with stickers and memory chips and a plastic extension of the cooling system. This card is 242mm long.

As a typical EVGA product, the card’s mounting bracket has a lot of vent openings.

Connectors

Connectors

This will help the cooler work more efficient. The EVGA has similar video outputs as the source GeForce GTX 660 does: a dual-link DVI-I, a dual-link DVI-D, an HDMI connector plus a DisplayPort.

An MIO connector for setting up 2-way SLI configurations and one 6-pin power connector can be found in their usual locations.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 is defined to consume maximal140 watts of power and recommended to be used with a 450-watt or above PSU.

The PCB is the same as the source product which has a 4-phase GPU voltage regulator based on a NCP5395G controller.

The product’s PCB structure

The product’s PCB structure

Software-based GPU voltage regulation is also supported. As for the memory chips, there is one more power phase.

This EVGA card sample’s GK106 revision A1 GPU was manufactured on the 35th week of 2012 (in late August) yet it measures 221square-mm. The GPU die is not protected by a heat-eliminating layer, but a metal frame.

Metal frame

Metal frame

The GPU clock rate increased by 9.4% in comparison with the source GeForce GTX 660: from 980/1033 MHz to 1072/1137 MHz. That’s also the highest GPU frequency among the three products in this review. The GPU voltage is 1.175 volts. In 2D apps, the clock rate and voltage are lowered down to 324MHz and 0.987 volts.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory in FCFBGA-packaged chips which you can see on both of the PCB’s sides. These are K4G20325FD-FC03 chips of Samsung Semiconductor.

Set at 6000MHz, the memory chips are fixed at 6008MHz by the card, thus there is no factory overclocking here. The 192-bit memory bus guarantees a peak bandwidth of 144.2 GB/s.

The following is an overview of specs of EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2:

Overview of specs

Overview of specs

The EVGA’s cooler doesn’t have any appropriate name though it’s quite exciting, regarding design and performance.

The EVGA’s cooler

The EVGA’s cooler

The GPU is cooled by many aluminum heat-sink plus a copper base and three copper pipes, featuring 6mm diameter. The heat-sink consists of two 80mm 9-blade fans. An aluminum contact with heat-sink pad is used to cool the card’s power system components. That contact is, in fact, created by the bent ends of the main heat-sink’s chinks cooled by one of two fans, so it looks like a simple and efficient solution.

The heat-sink section is covered by a plastic casing whose bottom and top surface was cut off.

Heat-sink section’s exterior

Heat-sink section’s exterior

Hence, a little hot air comes out into the case and then gets removed by system fans. This card’s fans are the PLA08015S12HH model from Power Logic.

Cooling fans

Cooling fans

Their speeds vary from 1000 to 3000 RPM.

To test the thermal energy in the reviewed graphics cards, we are going run 5 consecutive tests with Aliens vs. Predator (2010) game with the highest image quality plus 1920x1080p resolution with 16x anisotropic filtering and MSAA 4x antialiasing. We used MSI Afterburner 2.3.0 and GPU-Z 0.6.6 as controlling tools. This test was carried out in a closed system case at 23°C room condition. All thermal tests were run before we separated the card, meaning, with its default thermal platform.

Now, see how EVGA’s cooler deals with its missions with its fans that are set at auto or maximum speed.

Auto-fan mode

Auto-fan mode

Maximum-speed mode

Maximum-speed mode

After a while, we could say that the EVGA card is slightly hotter than models from Gigabyte and MSI. In the auto-fan mode, when the fans speed reached 1830RPM, the GPU’s temperature was 72°C. At the maximal 3090RPM speed, the temperature peaked 61°C. This is good yet unimpressive. Additionally, we don’t consider the noise factor yet save it for further discussion.

In overclocking tests, we tried to increase the GPU clock rate of the EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 by 55MHz, and its memory clock rate by 660MHz.

Overclocking tests

Overclocking tests

The clock rate measured was 1127/1192/6668MHz respectively.

Overclocking results

Overclocking results

In general, that is an average result for GeForce GTX 660.

Note that the overclocked graphics card shared the same temperature as before overclocking (72°C, at 1830RPM).

Overclocking results

Overclocking results

EVGA GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 specs:

·         Graphics processor: GK106 “Kepler” (TSMC)

·         Production process, nm: 28 (low-k)

·         Die size, nm2: 221

·         Transistors, mln: 2540

·         GPU frequency, MHz: 3D/1072 (1,137 – boost); 2D/324

·         Unified shader processor: 960

·         Texturing units: 80

·         Rasterization units (ROPs): 24

·         Max theoretical fillrate, Gpixels/s: 25.7

·         Max theoretical texture sampling rate, Gtexels/s: 85.8

·         Pixel Shaders/Vertex Shaders: 5.0/5.0

·         Supported memory type: GDDR5

·         Effective video memory: 3D/6,008; 2D/648

·         Memory size, MB: 2,048

·         Memory bus width, bit: 192

·         Memory bandwidth, GB/s: 144.2

·         Peak power consumption: 3D/140; 2D/no data

·         PSU requirements, W: 450

·         Reference PCB dimensions (LxWxD), mm: 242x100x37

·         Interface: PCI-Express x16 (v3.0)

·         Outs: DVI-I + DVI-D (Dual-Link), 1 HDMI v1.4a, 1 Display Port v1.2

·         MSRP/min retail price, USB: $239/$235

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