ZOTAC GTX 660 Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅13-09-12
Specification

Rather than trim back the GK104 found on the GTX680/670, the GTX660 features a totally new processing unit, the GK106.

The GK106 core still retains many of the features found on the flagship GK104 processor. SMX performance features are still there offering more shader, texture and processing performance while consuming less power than previous DX11 GPU's. Indeed, NVIDIA claim that the new Kepler core is capable of delivering twice the performance/watt ratio than the 1st gen DX11 graphics cards!


The new GTX660 contains five of these SMX units which gives us a total of 960 CUDA cores and 80 texture units spread across 3 Graphics processing clusters (GPC's).

The GeForce GTX660 also reatins the GPU Boost Feature found on the GTX680/670. We have covered the GPU Boost feature many times before so we won't go into it in-depth here too but suffice to say, GPU boost gives the gamer the processing power when he needs it while still remaining within predefined power limits - While not identical, think of it as Intel Turbo Boost technology on a GPU and you are not far wrong. Power saving when not stressed and turbo 'boosted' when under load.

The GTX660 ships with a 192-bit memory interface which allows NVIDIA to support mixed density memory modules (2GB instead of 1.5GB). As you can see from the picture above, there are 3 memory controllers:

Memory Controller 1: 4 pcs: 128M x 16 GDDR5 (1GB, 16-bit mode)
Memory Controller 2: 2 pcs: 64M x 32 GDDR5 (512MB, 32-bit mode)
Memory Controller 3: 2 pcs: 64M x 32 GDDR5 (512MB, 32-bit mode)

HEre's where it gets a little complex. The above memory controllers each have 512MB to play with which totals 1.5GB and a 192-bit interface. The remaining 512MB is controlled by the 1st memory controller but via 64-bit width. All-in-all 2GB is available to the GTX660 though which is more than was found on the last generation flagship models. This 2GB of memory is needed as NVIDIA are pitching the card to users of today's most popular resolution: 1920x1080p.

GTX660 Reference Specification

Graphics Processing Clusters 3
SMXs 5
CUDA Cores 960
Texture Units 80
ROP Units 24
Base Clock 980 MHz
Boost Clock 1033 MHz
Memory Clock (Data rate)6008 MHz
L2 Cache Size 384KB
Video Memory 2048MB GDDR5
Memory Interface 192-bit
Total Memory Bandwidth 144.2 GB/s
Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear)78.4 GigaTexels/sec
Fabrication Process 28 nm
Transistor Count 2.54 Billion
Connectors 2 x Dual-Link DVI 1 x HDMI 1 x DisplayPort
Form Factor Dual Slot
Power Connectors 1 x 6-pin
Recommended Power Supply 450 Watts
Thermal Design Power 140 Watts
Thermal Threshold 98° C


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