The EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked edition arrives

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable, if far too short, 2-day exploration for us in evaluating our new EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked. It did extraordinarily well performance-wise comparing it to the HD 7850 where it brings good performance value at $229.  When we overclocked our EVGA GTX 660 SC past the Galaxy GTX 660 GC clocks, we saw it narrow the performance gap with the faster reference GTX 660 Ti. We are totally impressed with this cool-running “value” enthusiast card which is nearly able to go head to head against the GTX 660 Ti in a few games.

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

For its $229 price, overclocked it gives more than 85% of the performance of the reference GTX 660 Ti which is priced at $299 and it completely beats up on even a factory-overclocked HD 7850. From our results, we can expect The EVGA GTX 660 SC to be a bit faster than the factory overclocked HD 7870s. At $229 it is priced to match the overclocked HD 7850’s while challenging and beating the more expensive HD 7870 in performance. And for the same price as the reference version, the EVGA GTX 660 Ti offers better performance than the reference 660s while giving the gamer EVGA’s excellent support and warranty as well as a great community.

Pros

• The EVGA GTX 660 SC provides excellent performance for a $229 card and soundly beats even the highest factory 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.
• 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 older 400 series.
• 3-panel 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 EVGA GTX 660 SC is a great value for the same price as the reference version. You get a 3 year warranty backed by 24/7 tech support and a great community.

Cons

• none.

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 EVGA GTX 660 SC is an great choice for the same price as the reference design and it is cheaper than the slower Galaxy GTX 660 GC . We feel EVGA’s Superclocked GTX 660 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 EVGA GTX 660 SC brings great value and a good 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 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.  You can expect more great reviews from Mario for our new mobile section; also expect a Kingston SSD evaluation face-off 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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