Galaxy’s GTX 660 arrives!

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable, if far too short, week’s exploration for us in evaluating our new Galaxy GTX 660 GC.   It did extraordinarily well performance-wise comparing it to last two generation’s GTX 570 and GTX 460 where it brings good performance value compared to the faster Kepler card and better efficiency and performance than the older Fermi second card. We are totally impressed with this cool-running mainstream “sweet spot” enthusiast card which totally runs away from it’s competitor the HD 7850, and even solidly beats the fastest factory-clocked HD 7850.

We see good overclockability with reasonable quietness at stock voltage and fan profile even when the Galaxy GTX 660 GC is overclocked beyond Galaxy’s factory overclock and it scales well in performance. It is as quiet as the HIS HD 7850 and EVGA GTX 660 Ti, quiet cards indeed.

For its $229 price, it gives more than 80% of the performance of the GTX 660 Ti which is priced at $299 and it runs away from even factory overclocked HD 7850s which are priced the same. From our results, we can expect the Galaxy GTX 660 will also be a bit faster than the HD 7870. At $229 it is priced to match the factory overclocked HD 7850s while challenging and beating the more expensive HD 7870 in performance. And for ten dollars more, the factory-overclocked Galaxy GTX 660 GC offers better performance than the reference 660s while giving the gamer Galaxy’s excellent support and warranty.

Pros

• The Galaxy GTX 660 GC provides excellent performance for a $229 card and soundly beats even the overclocked HD 7850 across the board.
• Overclockability is acceptable – GPU Boost works as advertised.
• The cooling design is quiet and efficient; the card and well-ventilated case stay cool even well-overclocked due to the Galaxy bracket.
• It is possible to use two of these cards for SLI performance without needing a big PSU
• 3D Vision 2 and PhysX enhance gaming immersion and both are improved using the GTX 660 compared to the GTX 460 which is not in the same performance class – upgrading from the EVGA (overclocked) GTX 460 FTW to the GTX 660 brought a solid improvement.
• Surround and 3D Vision Surround plus an accessory display can now be driven off of a single GTX 660 by requiring a single passive adapter; HD 7850 generally requires two, and tearing is noticeably less with Surround compared to Eyefinity
• New AA allows for high performance without jaggies in deferred shading lighting engines; TXAA solves the shimmering and crawling when the camera is in motion
• Adaptive VSync reduces stuttering while retaining the advantages of minimizing tearing.
• The Galaxy GTX 660 GC is a great value for just ten dollars more than the reference version. You get a 3 year warranty backed by 24/7 tech support.

Cons

• The factory overclock is modest and we also got a modest overclock at stock voltage and fan profile.

The Verdict:

• If you are buying a “sweet spot” midrange video card right now that is perfect for 1920×1080 as well as being great bang for buck, the Galaxy GTX 660 GC is an easy choice for only ten dollars more than the reference design. We feel it deserves ABT’s Editor’s Choice award since it absolutely destroys competing cards in its class and price range.

We do not know what the future will bring, but the Galaxy GTX 660 brings good value and a great performer to the 28nm GeForce Kepler family. With great features like PhysX and the second generation of 3D Vision, you can be assured of immersive gaming by picking this card for 1920×1080 resolution.

If you currently game on an older generation video card such as a GTX 460 or older, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a GTX 660 will give you much higher performance, and you are no doubt thinking of SLI if you want to get much higher gaming performance on a budget. The GTX 460 is starting to struggle in many modern games and the move to a GTX 660 will make for a better gaming experience.

The competition is hot and AMD offers their own set of features including Eyefinity 2.0 and the recently faster and lower-priced GHz editions. We are interested to see if there will be any further downward adjustments in AMD’s pricing regarding the HD 7870 and HD 7850.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT.  Later today you can expect an evaluation of the EVGA GTX 660 which arrived on Monday evening and was much too late to be included in this review – we understand it is an overclocking beast!  And you can expect more great reviews from Mario for our new mobile section; also expect a Kingston SSD evaluation faceoff between manstream and enthusiast SSDs as well as versus HDD. And don’t forget to check our forums.  ABT forum tech discussions are among the best to be found anywhere!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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