Final Thoughts
The GTX 660 sits at a very good position at the $200-$250 mainstream market. You are going to get a good price for performance ratio with this card, which many gamers will apprecaite. Remember this card is based off the GK106 core not the GK104 core that the GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670 and GTX 680 are based off of. With the GK106 you have 960 CUDA cores, with 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 24 raster operations processors (ROPs), and 2GB of memory on a 192-bit wide GDDR5 interface.
ASUS adds on the GTX 660 by including their DirectCU II cooler. ASUS has been using this cooler for a little while now and it really puts the competition in the dust. The two cooling fans are super quiet, but still provide great cooling. The 3 large copper heatpipes make direct contact with the GPU and take the heat to the large heatsink array for it the be dissipated. Oh yeah and the shroud ASUS uses looks awesome and will match ASUS’s own Republic of Gamers motherboards. Better cooling is not only good for better performance, but when you want to overclock the card you are going to be able to push it further.
Talking about overclocking this is the OC Edition of the card, which means instead of having a stock GPU clock of 980 MHz like on most GTX 660’s the stock clock on this card is 1020 MHz (1085 MHz boost). That means your performance is going to be better than any stock GTX 660 card out there. Even though this card was already overclocked I was able to get the stock GPU clock up to 1100 MHz and the memory up to 1600 MHz. ASUS’s GPU Tweak software makes overclocking pretty easy and also allows you to monitor everything.
Like most ASUS cards they have gone with their own custom PCB for the card. It is designed with ASUS’s DIGI+VRM design which features 6 power phases that have digital voltage regulators to minimize power noise by 30% and enhance power efficiency by 15%, widen the voltage modulation range, and improve overall stability and longevity by 2.5 times longer than reference designs.
The only real problem I had with this card was the minimal accessories included. The card only comes with the single DVI to VGA adapter.
When it comes down to it if you are looking at a GTX 660 ASUS’s GTX 660 DirectCU II OC Edition is a great choice not only because it is overclocked but because of the cooling power and quality components used. You can pick up this card at my favorite online retailer for $239.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II OC Edition Video Card a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award.
Pros:
– Great overall performance
– DirectCU II cooling
– DIGI+VRM power design
– Only requires a single 6pin PCie connector
– Factory overclocked
– GPU Tweak software included
Cons:
– Only accessory is a DVI to VGA adapter
