The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Review: GK106 Fills Out The Kepler Family
by Ryan Smith on September 13, 2012 9:00 AM ESTJust What Is NVIDIA’s Competition & The Test
Every now and then it’s productive to dissect NVIDIA’s press presentation to get an idea of what NVIDIA is thinking. NVIDIA’s marketing machine is generally laser-focused, but even so it’s not unusual for them to have their eye on more than one thing at a time.
In this case, ostensibly NVIDIA’s competition for the GTX 660 is the Radeon HD 7800 series. But if we actually dig through NVIDIA’s press deck we see that they only spend a single page comparing the GTX 660 to a 7800 series card (and it’s a 7850 at that). Meanwhile they spend 4 pages comparing the GTX 660 to prior generation NVIDIA products like the GTX 460 and/or the 9800GT.
The most immediate conclusion is that while NVIDIA is of course worried about stiff competition from AMD, they’re even more worried about competition from themselves right now. The entire computer industry has been facing declining revenues in the face of drawn out upgrade cycles due to older hardware remaining “good enough” for longer period of times, and NVIDIA is not immune from that. To even be in competition with AMD, NVIDIA needs to convince its core gaming user base to upgrade in the first place, which it seems is no easy task.
NVIDIA has spent a lot of time in the past couple of years worrying about the 8800GT/9800GT in particular. “The only card that matters” was a massive hit for the company straight up through 2010, which has made it difficult to get users to upgrade even 4 years later. As a result what was once a 2 year upgrade cycle has slowly stretched out to become a 4 year upgrade cycle, which means NVIDIA only gets to sell half as many cards in that timeframe. Which leads us back to NVIDIA’s press presentation: even though the GTX 460/560 has long since supplanted the 9800GT’s install base, NVIDIA is still in competition with themselves 4 years later, trying to drive their single greatest DX10 card into the sunset.
The Test
The official launch drivers for the GTX 660 are 306.23, which are the latest iteration of NVIDIA’s R304 branch of drivers. Besides adding support for the GTX 660, these drivers are performance-identical to earlier R304 drivers in our tests.
Also, we'd like to give a quick thank you to Antec, who rushed out a replacement True Power Quattro 1200 PSU on very short notice after the fan went bad on our existing unit. Thanks guys!
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Monitor: | Samsung 305T |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7950 NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 304.79 Beta NVIDIA ForceWare 305.37 NVIDIA ForceWare 306.23 Beta AMD Catalyst 12.8 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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Amgal - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
A little off topic, but does anandtech have an article explaining TU's, SMXes, ROPs, shader clock, etc- basically explaining the new age graphics card architectures? I really enjoy their informative articles, and am having some trouble finding one on that area that isn't littered with incomprehensible computer science macroes. Thanks.pattycake0147 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
If the majority of cards available for sale have custom coolers, why are noise measurements taken for only the reference card? Especially when you've stated that you have custom cards in the lab.Jad77 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
but shouldn't AMD be releasing their next generation sometime soon?Patflute - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Months from now.rarson - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Can we please stop pretending that Nvidia's supply issues are anybody's fault but their own? Is it just a coincidence that Fermi and Kepler both were huge, horrible misfires or is it possible that Nvidia has struggled to design things that actually yield decently? Can we stop ignoring the fact that AMD has had an entire lineup of 28nm parts since March (you know, like 2 months before Kepler ever appeared in reasonable quantities)? Yeah, 28nm IS constrained, but other companies are still putting out parts. Nvidia can't put out parts because they have to throw them away. They're eating the wafers (they must be eating a lot of them if it took them this long to bring out a $300 part).I hope Nvidia can pull it together because at this rate, AMD's going to start launching a generation ahead of them (they already have all of the console business).
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
nVidia dropped it production purchased spots, so you amd fanboys could blow giant dollars on nearly unavailable amd crap overpriced crashing non pci-e3 gen compliant video card trashyou did so
Well not you, but you know what I mean
Then nVidia released and 2 days before amd "magically" had supply in the channels.
If you're too stupid to know that - well - sorry since it's obvious
Then amd crashed it's prices 4 times, and amd fanboys were left raped
Then amd fired 10% more and now 15% more
I hope the amd golden parachutes for the criminal executives pleased you
What's your guess on the amd buyout rumors ?
My guess is that 3G of ram you fools tried to lie about having an advantage with the totaled and incapable gpu choking on dirt below it at frame rates no Skyrim player could possibly stand, won't be recieving "driver updates" for that "glorious future" when "new games" that "can make use of it" "become available" !
right fan boy ?
RIGHT
LOL
Have a nice cry, err I meant day.
Lepton87 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
This card is obviously slower than 7870.http://tpucdn.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Twin_Frozr_I...
Just look at performance summaries from other sites. But the most glaring flaw of this review is NOT comparing it to OC'ed AMD cards. After OC even 7850 is going to obliterate this overpriced card with almost no clock headroom.
Lepton87 - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Unfortunately Anandtech is playing favourites. It's the only site that I know that has somewhat decent reputation that just couldn't admit that 7970GE is simply a faster card than GTX680 and now this....CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Oh come on quarky, Crysis Warhead and Metro first on every review doesn't do it for you ?The alphabet here goes A for amd first, then C, the jumps to M, for amd , again and again.
Why so sour, because amd is almost toast ?
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
100%, vs 103%, at a single resolution, the 1920x1200, when 1920x1080 shows another story, and the 7850 is down low at 85%.LOL - yeah amd fanboy, you sure are telling this amd fanboy site..
Can we count how CRAPPY amd drivers are ? Can we count no adaptive v-sync on amd crap cards, can we count no 4 monitors out of the box on amd cards, can we count no auto overclocking, can we count amd slashing it's staff and driver writers aka catalusy maker issues ?
Can we count any of that, or should we just count 3% ? LOL
Oh wait fair and above it all amd fanboy, I know the answer...
We will just count 3 more frames per 100 frame rate, at a single resolution, at your single link, and ignore everything else.
LOL
Thank you for your support.