KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 EX OC review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase

Right then the grunge brothers from KFA2 are back at is as well with their EX OC edition of the GeForce GTX 660. Obviously they'll offer multiple models/SKUs as well but the one submitted comes factory overclocked albeit we have to state .. it's not a lot.

The card comes with a core clock frequency of 1006 MHz and has a boost frequency of 1072 MHz. The effective memory data rate (192-bit) is 6008 MHz which follows the reference standard. The card has been equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. So yes at 1006 Mhz the card is clocked 26 MHz faster hen the reference product.

When we look at the PCB we do see that KFA2 uses a customized PCB design, a very clean layout with proper component selection and the color blue. Admittedly, blue doesn't work for me anymore anno 2012. Do it black do it white do it yellow for all I care, blue simply does not match up with today's mainstream, and enthusiast mainboard PCB colors.

For the GTX 660 EX O, KFA2  is using the somewhat older an updated model cooler and we can already state real fast that the cooler works really well as symbiosis with GK106. The noise levels are fairly hard to measure and the cooling performance grand. We'll show you that in our tests of course.

But lets walk through the product guided by photo's.

Alright, here we have the KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 EX OC edition, the 2GB SKU (stock keeping unit) and its packaging. Overall a nice looking card some grey and blue tones. Let's look at the card from several different viewpoints.

The card is equipped with the GK106 GPU that harbors the Kepler GPU architecture. You get the basics like the graphics card, PEG converter cables, manual and a demo and driver CD, though bundles will vary with AIB/AIC partners.

KFA2 clocks this card at a shy 1006 MHz baseclock, with a 1072 MHz Boost/Turbo clock and the memory is running at 6008 MHz. This factory tweak positions the card close to the performance level of a reference GeForce GTX 660. Mind you that the reference baseclock is 980 MHz.

I fracked up the photo as I moved during the shoot, but bare with me .. the card will come with two GB of graphics memory, which is definitely enough if you are a hardcore gamer with a monitor resolution of 1920x1200 and plenty for a product in this price range. Should you opt multiple monitors and SLI, a future 3GB version could be something the AIC partners will develop. We are not 100% sure about that just yet though.

KFA2  gives the card two DVI connectors (dual-link), one HDMI and a DisplayPort connector (full size). We like that huge air exhaust as hot air can be vented outside the PC much better this way.

And as you can see there is little room left on the PCB, but overall a clean design. . The card is PCIe gen 3.0 compatible. Going from PCIe Gen 2 to Gen 3 doubles the bandwidth available to the add-on cards installed, from 500 MB/s per lane to 1 GB/s per lane. 

You can see one SLI connector, the 660 (non-Ti) series is allowed to work with up to two cards in SLI mode. For proper scaling and little driver issues as possible we always recommend to stick to 2 cards in multi-GPU mode anyway. We'll show you SLI results in our article of course.