System Overview & Testing Procedures
We’re going to be running the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC Edition through a full range of tests. As we have recently completely overhauled our GPU testing procedure, some tests may not have comparison data simply because those cards have not been tested under the new procedure. As time goes on, comparison results will become readily available.
This is the system we will be using to test the GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC.
Processor: Intel Core i7-3820
Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
Video Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC
Memory: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsZ
Power Supply: OCZ Fatal1ty Series 1000W
Storage: 750GB SATA II Drive
Cooling: Noctua NH-L12
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II
As always we’re first going to verify our numbers and make sure we’re accurately reporting the performance specification of the card. Here’s a GPU-Z screenshot, listing all the information. Unlike the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680 and GTX 690 which are based off GK104 core the GTX 660 is based off of the newer GK106 core. With the GK106 you have 960 CUDA cores, with 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 24 raster operations processors (ROPs), and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. As you can see this card has 960 shaders and is running with a GPU clock of 1020 MHz (1085 MHz boost) and memory clock of 1502 MHz.
Benchmarking Information
When we cover graphics cards, we always run the same benchmarking suites and then a selection of the most popular and hardware intensive games available.
Firstly, the suites we’ll be using are:
Suite | Settings |
3DMark 11 | Performance 720p, Extreme 1080p |
3DMark Vantage | Performance, High |
The demo benchmarks we’ll be using are:
Demo/Bench Tool | Settings |
Lost Planet 2 | Direct X 11, High Settings, MSAA4X, 1920 x 1080. Benchmark A. |
Alien Vs. Predator | Resolution: 1920×1080, Textures: Very High, Shadows: High, Anisotropic Filtering: 16x, SSAO: On, Tessellation: On, DX11 Advanced Shadows: On, MSAA: 4x |
Unigine Heaven | DX11, Tessellation: Normal, Anisotropy: 16x, Anti-Aliasing: 8x, Resolution: 1920×1080. |
Stone Giant | Resolution: 1920×1080, Tessellation: High, Aspect Ratio: 16:9 |
Finally, the full games we’ll be utilizing are:
Game | Map/Mission/Zone | Presets and Benchmarking Method |
Battlefield 3 | Operation Swordbreaker | Preset: Ultra, 1920×1080. Our defined scene using FRAPS. |
Metro 2033 | Frontline | DirectX 11, 1920×1080, “High” quality preset, MSAA 4x, AF 16x. DOF On. PhysX is disabled in order to provide a fair playing field for AMD GPU’s. Using full game’s built in benchmarking tool. |
Crysis II | Liberty | Quality: High, 1920×1080, 4x Anti-Aliasing, DX11 |
TES V:Skyrim | Opening cart scene | Preset: Ultra. 1920×1080. Using full game. 180 seconds FRAPS. |