MSI GeForce GTX 660 HAWK 2 GB Review

Item: MSI GeForce GTX 660 HAWK 2 GB
Author: TPU Staff

W1zzard

on Oct 21st, 2012,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

Packaging & Contents »

Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 660 was released just a month ago. It packs a total of 960 CUDA cores with 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 24 raster operations processors (ROPs), and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. As with the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, NVIDIA set 2 GB as the standard memory amount for the GeForce GTX 660. A 192-bit wide memory interface, populated with six memory chips of the same 2 Gbit density, should, typically, result in a memory amount of 1.5 GB.

MSI's GeForce GTX 660 HAWK is a highly customized version of the Geforce GTX 660 and comes with several features for enthusiast overclockers like dual BIOS, with the second BIOS being optimized for liquid nitrogen use, and voltage measurements points for voltmods.

The GPU clock has been increased by over 100 MHz, which will provide a nice performance boost. Unfortunately, memory has remained at the default speed of 1500 MHz.

GeForce GTX 660 Market Segment Analysis
	Radeon HD 6950	GeForce GTX 570	Radeon HD 6970	Radeon HD 7850	GeForce GTX 660	MSI GTX 660 HAWK	Radeon HD 7870	GeForce GTX 580	GeForce GTX 660 Ti	Radeon HD 7950	GeForce GTX 670	Radeon HD 7970
Shader Units	1408	480	1536	1024	960	960	1280	512	1344	1792	1344	2048
ROPs	32	40	32	32	24	24	32	48	24	32	32	32
Graphics Processor	Cayman	GF110	Cayman	Pitcairn	GK106	GK106	Pitcairn	GF110	GK104	Tahiti	GK104	Tahiti
Transistors	2640M	3000M	2640M	2800M	2540M	2540M	2800M	3000M	3500M	4310M	3500M	4310M
Memory Size	2048 MB	1280 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	2048 MB	1536 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	320 bit	256 bit	256 bit	192 bit	192 bit	256 bit	384 bit	192 bit	384 bit	256 bit	384 bit
Core Clock	800 MHz	732 MHz	880 MHz	860 MHz	980 MHz+	1085 MHz+	1000 MHz	772 MHz	915 MHz+	800 MHz	915 MHz+	925 MHz
Memory Clock	1250 MHz	950 MHz	1375 MHz	1200 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1200 MHz	1002 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1502 MHz	1375 MHz
Price	$170	$250	$380	$185	$230	$250	$245	$430	$280	$310	$380	$390