As a rule, video cards are produced by a large number of manufacturers on the basis of the same chips, and the base - "reference" sample is the first to be presented by the developer and manufacturer of the chipset. However, instead of the reference sample of the Nvidia GeForce 660 video card, this time its different variants began to appear first. As of the beginning of the last decade of August 2012, this product is not yet in stores, but the appearance is expected from day to day.
The Nvidia GeForce 660 is the third Kepler-based graphics card released this year. It is also considered the third in terms of performance among single-processor cards of this platform - more powerful versions are designated 670 and 680. This video accelerator is of the greatest interest from a purely practical point of view - if the older versions are designed for enthusiasts of users with extreme demands for the power of video cards, then the GeForce 660 should be closer to the average price range. In addition to "budget" models, such video cards are usually in the greatest demand, so specialists and potential buyers are interested in how much it is inferior to versions 670 and 680.
The Nvidia GeForce 660 uses the same GK104 GPU as the older models and has the same PCB as the 670 option. However, some of the blocks are disabled in the processor, which lowers the maximum possible frequency. Even with such limitations, the new video card in most tests outperforms the older version from the previous generation line - Nvidia GeForce 580 - and retains good potential for additional overclocking.
Due to this potential, we should expect the appearance of cards from different manufacturers in stores, whose parameters will be changed in the direction of increasing performance compared to those declared for the reference Nvidia sample. For example, the characteristics of the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP are already known! Edition, which has a base frequency of 1033 MHz instead of the standard 915 MHz, and the built-in overclocking functions can increase it to 1111 MHz. The effective memory clock speed (2GB GDDR5) is also increased to 6608 MHz from the standard 6008 MHz. And the GeForce GTX 660 Ti UltraCharged model from Point of View and TGT even has an automatic overclocking mode up to 1200 MHz, which can be additionally raised by manual settings. However, the GPUs with low leakage for this model are hand-picked, which is why it costs 329 euros.
