ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II Overclocking Review

Becky

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Hard OCP have reviewed the overclocked ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II graphics card:

"On Thursday, September 13th NVIDIA launched the brand new GeForce GTX 660 GPU. We evaluated a full custom retail ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II video card. This video card was not the OC or TOP version, but based on the reference clock speeds of the new GTX 660. We found better than expected performance out of the GeForce GTX 660, but it has some obstacles to climb against the stiff competition thanks to AMD price drops that have recently taken place. One area we were not able to cover in the original article but hoping would be the saving grace of the GTX 660 was overclocking. In this article today we will look at overclocking, which may surprise you compared to other "Kepler" architecture GPUs such as the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, and GTX 680 when it comes to overclocking potential.

First let's talk about what we have, and then we will talk about some limitations in the GeForce GTX 660 that hamper overclocking. The GeForce GTX 660 is using the same "Kepler" architecture as the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, and GTX 680. However, the GTX 660 is using new silicone; in this case it is called GK106., whereas the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670 and GTX 680 all use the GK104 silicone. The new GK106 is still manufactured on a mature TSMC 28nm manufacturing process, and contains 5 SMX units. With a mature 28nm process, a newer chip, and less CUDA cores, you'd think overclocking would be at least equally as good as the more power hungry GK104 chips. Well, this is not really the case as we will explain below. There are some limitations that are holding back the potential for overclocking GTX 660 video cards."

You can read their full review here.
 

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