MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Editon OC review - Product Showcase MSI GTX 660 Ti Power OC Edition

Product Showcase MSI GTX 660 Ti Power OC Edition

MSI is going strong again with their own custom PCB design for the all new GTX 660 Ti. That custom PCB is once again loaded with their Military class III component selection  and as such they have made a product that impresses just by looking at it. It feels strong and sturdy, nothing is bendy or fragile. The Power Edition as tested today comes with a factory overclock of 1020 MHz and 1098 MHz on the boost clock. Coming from 920 MHz GPU / 980 MHz Boost clock frequency based on the reference design, it certainly helps. The effective memory data rate (192-bit) remains clocked at a reference 6008 MHz.

The Power edition also comes with MSI Afterburner that supports Triple overvolting. Mind you that GPU voltage limitation is set at a maximum of +100 Mv on all cards that you will see, this is set and regulated by NVIDIA. Triple over volting also allows you to tweak memory and auxiliary voltages.

The card is cooled by the nice TwinFrozr IV cooler which keep the card at roughly 65 Degrees C under normal game stress conditions and proper cooling inside your chassis. TwinFrozr IV embeds two 8cm PWM fans tied to nice thick heatpipes. The card remains silent during gaming. Oh embedded here as well is the new dust removal technology, at boot up your fans will spin reversed for a little while, trying to dump residual dust.

But let's have a look at some photo's.

Alright, here we have the MSI GTX 660 Ti Power OC Edition, the 2GB SKU (stock keeping unit) and its packaging. Overall a nice dark looking card some blue tones. The lloks just ooze sturdy. Let's look at the card from several different viewpoints.

The card is equipped with the GK104 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.

Gigabyte clocks this OC model card at a 1020 MHz baseclock, a 1098 MHz Boost/Turbo clock and the memory is running at 6008 MHz. This factory tweak positions the card at the performance level close to the GeForce GTX 670. Mind you that the reference baseclock is 915 MHz, so that's an interesting a factory clock right there.

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. Should you opt multiple monitors and SLI, a future 4GB version might be a slightly better alternative.

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 two SLI connectors, the 660 series is allowed to work with up to three 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.

MSI gives the card two DVI connectors (dual-link), one HDMI and a DisplayPort connector (full size).