The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Review: GK106 Fills Out The Kepler Family
by Ryan Smith on September 13, 2012 9:00 AM ESTOC: Power, Temperature, & Noise
Before wrapping things up, we wanted to quickly take a look at the overclocking potential of the GTX 660. As the first GK106 product GTX 660 should give us some idea as to how capable GK106 is at overclocking, though like GK104 we’re eventually at the mercy of NVIDIA’s locked voltages and limited power target control.
In its rawest form, GTX 660 will have two things going against it for overclocking. First and foremost, as the highest clocked GK106 part it’s already starting out at a fairly high clockspeed – 980MHz for reference cards, and upwards of 1050MHz for factory overclocked cards – so there may not be a great deal of overclocking headroom left to exploit. Furthermore because NVIDIA is keeping the power consumption of the card low (it needs to stay under 150W max), the maximum power target is the lowest we’ve seen for any GTX 600 card yet: it’s a mere 110%. As a result even if we can hit a large GPU clock offset, there may not be enough power headroom available to let the GPU regularly reach those speeds.
Memory overclocking on the other hand looks much better. With the same memory controllers and the same spec’d RAM as on the other high-end GTX 600 cards, there’s no reason to believe that the GTX 660 shouldn’t be able to hit equally high memory clocks, which means 6.5GHz+ is a reasonable goal.
| GeForce GTX 660 Overclocking | ||||||
| Ref GTX 660 | EVGA GTX 660 SC | Zotac GTX 660 | Gigabyte GTX 660 OC | |||
| Shipping Core Clock | 980MHz | 1046MHz | 993MHz | 1033MHz | ||
| Shipping Max Boost Clock | 1084MHz | 1123MHz | 1110MHz | 1123MHz | ||
| Shipping Memory Clock | 6GHz | 6GHz | 6GHz | 6GHz | ||
| Shipping Max Boost Voltage | 1.175v | 1.175v | 1.162v | 1.175v | ||
| Overclock Core Clock | 1080MHz | 1096MHz | 1093MHz | 1083MHz | ||
| Overclock Max Boost Clock | 1185MHz | 1174MHz | 1215MHz | 1174MHz | ||
| Overclock Memory Clock | 6.7GHz | 6.9GHz | 6.7GHz | 6.5GHz | ||
| Overclock Max Boost Voltage | 1.175v | 1.175v | 1.162v | 1.175v | ||
Throwing in our factory overclocked cards from our companion roundup, our core overclocking experience was remarkably consistent. The difference in the max boost clock between the slowest and fastest card was a mere 41MHz, with the Zotac card being a clear outlier compared to the rest of our cards. This comes as no great surprise since all of these launch cards are using the NVIDIA reference PCB, so there’s little room at this moment for overclocking innovation.
Memory overclocking is as volatile as ever, with a 400MHz spread between our best and worst cards. Again with the use of the reference PCB (and the same Samsung RAM), memory overclocking is entirely the luck of the draw.
For the moment at least GTX 660 overclocking looks to be on a level playing field due to all partners using the same PCB. For overclockers the choice of a card will come down to pricing, what cooler they prefer, and any preference in vendor.
The end result of all of this is that at best we’re seeing 100MHz overclocks (going by the max boost clock), which represents roughly a 10% overclock. Coupling this with a good memory overclock and the 10% increase in the power target will result in around a 10% increase in performance, which isn’t shabby but also is the same kind of shallow overclocking potential that we’ve seen on cards like the GTX 670 and GTX 660 Ti. All told the GTX 660 isn’t a poor overclocker – 10% more performance for free is nothing to sneeze at – but it’s also not going to enamor itself with hardware overclockers who like to chase 20% or more.
Moving on to our performance charts, we’re going to once again start with power, temperature, and noise, before moving on to gaming performance. Due to popular demand we’ll also be including overclocking results with just a 110% power target so that you can see the impact of adjusting the power target separately from the clock offsets.
With a 110% power target we should be seeing an 11W-14W increase in power consumption, which is indeed roughly what we’re seeing at the wall after accounting for PSU inefficiencies. In Metro this is just enough of a difference to erase most of the GTX 660’s power consumption advantage over the GTX 660 Ti, though the GTX 660 still draws marginally less power than the stock 7870. Meanwhile under OCCT the GTX 660 now draws more power than the 7870, but still is still drawing over 20W less than the stock GTX 660 Ti.
Our increased power consumption pushes temperatures up by another 2-3C. This is nothing a blower can’t handle, let alone an open-air cooler.
Interestingly enough, despite the increase in power consumption and temperatures, overclocking has almost no impact on noise. In the worst case scenario our GTX 660’s increased its fan speed by all of 2%, which increases noise by less than 1dB. As a result the amount of noise generated by the overclocked GTX 660 is practically identical to that generated by the stock GTX 660, and still below the reference 7870.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
147 Comments
View All Comments
chizow - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
Where did I call you an idiot? You took issue with my response to rarson, who fits my profile as someone who continuously ignores or is unable to understand some very simple concepts backed by mounds of evidence and historical data.Then he has the gall to question my ability to understand certain concepts? Of course I have trouble understanding opinions founded on stupidity. Unless you have the same problems, why would you take offense?
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Here, I'll call him an idiot and a liar.He's an idiot and a liar.
He's been one forever.
It will never change.
As least David's butt is smakc full of his lipstick, and poor Goliath is rich as can be and the one still standing and alive.
I guess Galidou sucked too hard now David (amd) is almost dead.
Poor Galidou, supporting the underdog under it's jockstrap just hasn't worked out at all.
I have a feeling David's paramour might be a bit "upset" again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
Did the idiot get anything correct ?
Were his correction to his incorrect comments that he corrected not needed anyway since even after the corrections he issued to himself he was still wrong?
I'll answer that.
YES.
Galidou - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_...20% more performance than last gen for the same price one year and a half later isn't a big deal either. Sure you win on thermal and consumption constraints.
You don't even know me personally and still you have to insult my intelligence, that's what fanboys do... and that's far worse than lacking of judgement in my opinion.
I admit that AT LAUNCH the 7970 was worse than the gtx 280 compared to last gen parts but you have to consider what's coming out too. And we all know they have this kind of information, and estimation of the performance of the part for the price.
So right, they should of priced 7970 400$ but that would of made another war with Nvidia(which already sued AMD for price fixing between them) so this price might just reflect the return to normal for both companies. No more 4870 BIG DEAL, back to normal, not because AMD want to price it BADLY because they have been sued to do so....
Galidou - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
You get the first shot on new technology, you price it higher, you lower the price when the new stuff comes out. Same laws for both companies. 4870 was an unknown mistake, the chip wasn't out and the preliminary tests showed it performing way less than when it launched.It was a precipitated launch. Prices had been fixed WAY before the final product. With drivers enhancements and such the 4870 performed WAY above what AMD was hoping for, it was a surprise to them. They couldn't play too much with the price because it was already out in the medias for a while. Shit happens, they have been sued for being lucky with their final products for price fixin and next gen cards AHD to go up in prices breaking the amazing deal they sold for.
chizow - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link
"I admit that AT LAUNCH the 7970 was worse than the gtx 280 compared to last gen parts but you have to consider what's coming out too."Finally, now was that so hard?
Galidou - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
Worst increase in performance, not, gtx 680 is 20-25% average faster than gtx 580. Biggest increase in price, sure but do you know anything about price fixing between AMD and Nvidia, yep, the prices are fixed by both companies.Even if they were sued just before the days of radeon 4870 and gtx 280(thus explaining in part why the price of the 4870 wasn't adjusted to Nvidia because they were forbid to and were being checked) they continue to do that.
Galidou - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
While speaking about all that, pricing of the 4870 and 7970 do you really know everything around that, because it seems not when you are arguing, you just seem to put everything on the shoulder of a company not knowing any of the background.Do you know the price of the 4870 was already decided and it was in correlation with Nvidia's 9000 series performance. That the 4870 was supposed to compete against 400$ cards and not win and the 4850 supposed to compete against 300$ series card and not win. You heard right, the 9k series, not the GTX 2xx.
The results even just before the coming out of the cards were already ''known''. The real things were quite different with the final product and last drivers enhancements. The performance of the card was actually a surprise, AMD never thought it was supposed to compete against the gtx 280, because they already knew the performance of the latter and that it was ''unnaittanable'' considering the size of the thing. Life is full of surprise you know.
Do you know that after that, Nvidia sued AMD/ATI for price fixing asking for more communications between launch and less ''surprises''. Yes, they SUED them because they had a nice surprise... AMD couldn't play with prices too much because they were already published by the media and it was not supposed to compete against gtx2xx series. They had hoped that at 300$ it would ''compete'' against the gtx260 and not win against i thus justifying the price of the things at launch. And here you are saying it's a mistake launching insults at me, telling me I have a low intelligence and showing you're a know it all....
Do you know that this price fixing obligation is the result of the pricing of the 7970, I bet AMD would of loved to price the latter at 400$ and could do it but it would of resulted in another war and more suing from Nvidia that wanted to price it's gtx 680 500$ 3 month after so to not break their consumers joy, they communicate A LOT more than before so everyone is happy, except now it hurts AMD because you compare to last gen and it makes things seems less of a deal. But with things back to normal we will be able to compare last gen after the refreshed radeon 7xxx parts and new gen after that.
Nvidia the ''giant'' suing companies on the limit of ''extinction'', nice image indeed. Imagine the rich bankers starting to sue people in the streets, and they are the one you defend so vigorously. If they are that rich, do you rightly think the gtx 280 was well priced even considering it was double the last generation... It just means one thing, they could sell their card for less money but instead they sue the other company to take more money from our pockets, nice image.... very nice..... But that doesn't mean I won't buy an Nvidia card, I just won't defend them as vigorously as you do.... For every Goliath, we need a David, and I prefer David over Goliath.... even if I admire the strenght of the latter....
Galidou - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
I was wrong, Nvidia didn't sue over AMD, both companies were sued for price fixing but things are back now, anyway all this stuff is taking way too much of my time, you have your way of seeing things as facts, I have my way of seeing things as my opinion, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because you're so much more intelligent than me and I don't care about the ultimate truth as I don't beleive in such a thing.Being sued back in 2008 in the times they were working on gtx2xx and 4870 series might explain the lack of information on each others and the reason why they couldn'T play with the price once they knew the surprise. They were probably forbid to adjust price based on each other performance for the benefit of the consumer. But the surprise of that SO small chip performing sometimes better than a gpu 110% bigger was a real shock for the small company.
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
You truly are an estrogen doused total licker bleeding red that no tamp can ever stop.Thanks for the pathetic entertainment.
Now you may whine some more in your sensitive little girl voice.
Galidou - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Wow, chizow's acolyte is back. I guess it's his troll name and when he can'T stand it anymore he logs with CeriseCogburn to insult people so he Chizow's name remain clean.Who's whining, when I read you, it seems that's all you can do whine whine whine.... read everything you ever wrote in the last 6 months and that's ALL you do insulting people and whining.... look in the mirror dude.