The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Review: GK106 Fills Out The Kepler Family
by Ryan Smith on September 13, 2012 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Its popularity aside, Battlefield 3 may be the most interesting game in our benchmark suite for a single reason: it’s the first AAA DX10+ game. It’s been 5 years since the launch of the first DX10 GPUs, and 3 whole process node shrinks later we’re finally to the point where games are using DX10’s functionality as a baseline rather than an addition. Not surprisingly BF3 is one of the best looking games in our suite, but as with past Battlefield games that beauty comes with a high performance cost.
BF3 has always favored NVIDIA’s architectures, so it comes as no surprise here that this is another good showing for the GTX 660. Realistically speaking MSAA is out of the question here since the minimum framerates would drop into the 20s, but performance is still high enough for 1920 on Ultra quality with FXAA. Here the GTX 660 trails the GTX 660 Ti by 12% while stopping just short of completely clobbering the 7800 series. At 71fps it can beat the 7870 by 19% and even beats the 7950 by 14%. Much like Portal 2 this is a game where the 7950 should by all rights be winning, so it’s curious just what is going on under the hood that has NVIDIA’s architectures doing so well here.
Even among NVIDIA cards however this is another strong showing for the GTX 660. Here it improves on the performance of the GTX 460 by 76%, a difference so large that it sees the GTX 660 crack 60fps at 1920 when the GTX 460 can’t crack 60fps at 1680.
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TemjinGold - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
"For today’s launch we were able to get a reference clocked card, but in order to do so we had to agree not to show the card or name the partner who supplied the card.""Breaking open a GTX 660 (specifically, our EVGA 660 SC using the NV reference PCB),"
So... didn't you just break your promise as soon as you made it AND show a pic of the card right underneath?
Sufo - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Haha, shhhh!Homeles - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Reading comprehension is such an endangered resource...If it's the super clocked edition, it's obviously not a reference clocked card.
jonup - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Exactly my thoughts.Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Homeles is correct. That's one of the cards from the launch roundup we're publishing later today.. The reference-clocked GTX 660 we tested is not in any way pictured (I'm not quite that daft).knutjb - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
No matter what you try to say it still reads poorly. It should be blatantly obvious about which card was which up front, which the article wasn't. I should have to dig when scanning through.Also, your picking it as the better choice over a card that has been out how long, over slight differences... If nvivda really wanted to me to say wow I'll buy it now, the card would have been no more than 199 at launch. 10 bucks under is the best they can do for being late to the party? And you bought the strategy. I have been equally disappointed with AMD when they have done the same thing.
MrSpadge - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link
When reading Anadtech articles it's almost always safe to assume "he actually means what he's saying". Helps a lot with understanding.thomp237 - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
So where is this roundup? We are now 10 days on from your comment and still no signs of a roundup.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 12, 2012 - link
I have been wondering where all the eyefinity amd fragglers have gone to, and now I know what has occurred.Eyefinity is Dead.
These Kepler GPU's from nVidia all can do 4 monitors out of the box. Sure you might find a cheap version with 3 ports, whatever - that's the minority.
So all the amd fanboys have shut their fat traps about eyefinity, since nVidia surpassed them with A+ 4 easy monitors out of the box on all the Kelpers.
Thank you nVidia dearly for shutting the idiot pieholes of the amd fanboys.
It took me this long to comment on this matter because nVidia fanboys don't all go yelling in unison sheep fashion about stuff like the little angry losing amd fans do.
I have also noticed all the reviewers who are so used to being amd fan rave boys themselves almost never bring up multimonitor and abhor pointing out nVidia does 4 while amd only does 3 except in very expensive special cases.
Yeah that's notable too. As soon as amd got utterly and totally crushed, it was no longer a central topic and central theme for all the review sites like this place.
That 2 week Island vacation every year amd puts hundreds of these reporters on must be absolutely wonderful.
I do hope they are treated very well and have a great time.
EchoOne - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
LOL dude,the 660ti vs the 7950 in eyefinity would get destroyed.I know this because my friend has a comp build with a phenom 965be 4.2ghz and 660ti with 16gb of ram (i built this for him) and i have a fx 6100 4.7ghz,16gb ram and a 7950 i run a triple monitor setuphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRXGveviruw&fe...
And his 660ti DIED trying to play the games at that res and at the same settings as i do.He had to take down his graphics settings from say gta4 from max settings down to about medium and high (i run very high)
So yeah sure it can run a couple monitors out of the box but same with eyefinity.And trust me their nvidia surround is not as polished as eyefinity..But they get props for trying.