Legit Video Card Reviews

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Video Card Review w/ MSI and EVGA

Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Product: GeForce GTX 660
Date: Thu, Sep 13, 2012 - 08:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Overclocking The GeForce GTX 660

We installed the EVGA Precision X 3.0.3 software utility to overclock the EVGAGeForce GTX 660 Superclocked video card to see just how far we could push this card. With the new Kepler core architecture design used on the GeForce 600 series, you can now adjust the power target of the video card along with GPU and Memory clock offsets within a certain range.
EVGA Precision 3.0.3 Overclocking Utility

EVGA Precision X v3.0.3 lets you increase the power target to 110%. This is less than what we have seen on the higher end cards like the GeForce GTX 690 as you can increase the power target on that card to 135%.  the GPU clock offset to 549MHz and the Memory clock offset to 1000MHz.


EVGA Precision 3.0.3 Overclocking Utility

After spending a morning with the EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Superclocked we found that we were able to reach +110MHz on the core without any voltage increases. In games and benchmarks we saw the card hitting over 12540MHz when it was running boost! We didn't mess with overclocking the memory much as most of the gains on Kepler are with the GPU clock speeds and a 50MHz increase in the memory was not stable.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 at Stock Settings: 

GeForce GTX 660 3DMark 11 Score

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 6690 w/ 110% Power Target & +110MHz GPU Clock Offset: 

GeForce GTX 660 3DMark 11 Score

With this overclock we were able to hit P7732 on 3DMark 11 with the performance preset, which is a nice increase from P7113! This is a around a 700 point in our score, which is a 9% improvement in performance. 

You can't complain much when you can get around a 10% performance boost for no cost and minimal effort!

Next Page - Final Thoughts and Conclusions


Review Index
Page 1 - NVIDIA Brings Kepler To The Sweet Spot
Page 2 - EVGA GeForce GTX 660 SuperClocked
Page 3 - MSI GeForce GTX 660 Twin Frozr
Page 4 - Test Setup
Page 5 - Batman: Arkham City
Page 6 - Battlefield 3
Page 7 - Dirt: Showdown
Page 8 - Metro 2033
Page 9 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 10 - 3DMark 11
Page 11 - Power Consumption
Page 12 - Temperature & Noise Testing
Page 13 - Overclocking The GeForce GTX 660
Page 14 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions