GEFORCE GTX 660
Immediately after the release of the GeForce GTX 680, many users began to wait for the release of less powerful and expensive options, like the well-known GeForce GTX 460 and GTX 560. But NVIDIA was in no hurry to release anything based on the new chips, only based on the top-end GK104. But even the stripped-down version of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti all is still sold at a fairly high price. And so, for the autumn period of mass sales, the company released two new models designed for the price segment less than $300.
Naturally, many users were waiting for less expensive solutions based on the successful Kepler architecture. And so, the GeForce GTX 660 and GeForce GTX 650 models were presented. The new GeForce GTX 660 model video card provides the optimal combination of performance, price and energy consumption. It is precisely these solutions that are becoming the most popular among PC game lovers. And the relatively inexpensive GeForce GTX 650 offers entry-level gaming performance and all the capabilities of more powerful solutions.
This model is designed to strengthen NVIDIA's position in the low-cost video card segment, where such well-known models as GeForce 8800 GT and 9800 GT performed extremely well a few years ago. Let's recall that GeForce 8800 GT was announced in the fall of 2007 and the announced prices were within $199-$249, although those video cards were initially sold at a slightly higher price.
According to the company's tests, the GeForce GTX 660 is more than four times faster than the old model, and the GTX 460 is almost two times faster. In addition to its speed characteristics, the GTX 660 differs from the 9800 GT in its support for DirectX 11 (the old GeForce 8800/9800 does not have it), several times greater mathematical power, texture fetch and fill rate speed, as well as a larger volume and bandwidth of local video memory. All this is completely logical and understandable, because almost 8800 years have passed between the announcement dates of the GeForce 660 GT and GTX 5! It’s no wonder that during this time many indicators of video cards in this price range have increased by 3-5 times. Along with the final performance.
Characteristics of GeForce GTX 660
| Name | GeForce GTX 660 |
| Core | GK106 |
| Process technology (µm) | 0.028 |
| Transistors (millions) | 2540 |
| Core frequency | 960 (Boost Clock 1033) |
| Memory operating frequency (DDR) | 3004 (6008) |
| Bus and memory type | 192-bit GDDR5 |
| Bandwidth (Gb/s) | 144.192 |
| Unified shader units | 960 |
| Unified shader unit frequency | 960 (Boost Clock 1033) |
| TMU on conveyor | 80 |
| ROP | 24 |
| DirectX | 11.1 |
| Memory Capacity | 2048 |
| Interface | PCI-E 3.0 |
Unlike previous GeForce GTX 600 series graphics cards, the GTX 660 model announced today is based on a new mid-range GPU called the GK106. This GPU supports all the features that appeared in the top GK104, which is the basis of the GeForce GTX 680 video card, and all the features of the Kepler architecture apply to it in full, including the organization of SMX multiprocessors and frequency increase technology GPU boost
Interestingly, although the GeForce GTX 660 model is based on the full (not cut down) version of the GK106 chip, it includes five SMX multiprocessors, consisting of 960 streaming cores and 80 texture units. The GeForce GTX 660 has three 64-bit memory controllers for a total of 192-bit access to local video memory. Since the ROP raster operation blocks are “tied” to the controllers, their number also has not changed with the GTX 660 Ti and is 24 blocks. As in the case of the older solution based on GK104, the GeForce GTX 660 memory controller can work with memory chips of mixed capacities. It was this solution that made it possible to make the memory volume not 1.5 or 3 GB, but 2 GB, using 192-bit access.
