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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yeeeeman - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
Really, G80 was a revolution on its own. Spectacular jump in performance compared to the previous generation, and combined with 65nm process technology gave birth to some of the finest video cards.The real setback here, is the fact that the gaming industry is driven by the lowest common denominator, and we all know that consoles are the most important. They are sold in the largest quantities, and most games are designed for their power, not higher.
For PCs, games receive a DX11 treatment, with some fancy features, than enhance the quality a little bit, but it can never make up for the fact that the textures and the game is designed for a much slower platform.
So given these facts, why change my 9600GT, when it can handle pretty much everything?
steelnewfie - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
"For the 2GB GTX 660, NVIDIA has outfit the card with 8 2Gb memory modules"Should read outfitted.
Also 8 2Gb memory modules? Did you mean 2GB? Either is incorrect by my math.
If there are 8 banks should not each module be 256 MB?
Otherwise, great articles, keep up the good work!
Ryan Smith - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
Individual memory modules are labeled by their capacity in bits, not bytes. So each module is 2 gigabits (Gb), which is 256MB. 8x2Gb is how the card ends up with 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM.MrBubbles - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
Cool, I have a GTX 260 and since NVidia is deliberately breaking their driver support for games like Civ 5 I guess this is the card to get.saturn85 - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
nice folding@home benchmark.JWill97 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
For me, I really think it's the best card you can buy at this price. Not a fan (neutral) of both NVidia or AMD, but really, at $200+ segment nvidia takes it. But I still wondering, why all reviewers aren't using Maxpayne3 as one of the game benchmark? A lot of cards would be struggle playing it.Grawbad - Friday, March 1, 2013 - link
"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."I am one of those. I purchased a 9800 GTX and that sucker runs everything. Mind you, all my other components were quality too so I didn't bottleneck myself. But this card has run everything I have ever thrown at it.. Only recently have I had to start watching the AA a bit. Which is why I am now, 5 years later in the market for a new card. 5 Years.
Indeed, those cards were astounding.
Mine was an EVGA 9800 GTX with a lifetime warranty. Thank goodness for that as it finally went out on me this year and I had to RMA it. And now that I am looking into getting a new card it seems EVGA has dropped their lifetime warranty. That makes me sad.
Anyways, yeah, those were are are still great cards. I mean, if you picked up a 9800 GTX today, you will be able to run even the newest games. Albeit youll need to turn down aa and such, but you can still get GREAT graphics out of most anything even today.