Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB Review

Zotac GeForce GTX 660 2GB Review

Manufacturer: Zotac
UK Price (as reviewed): £180.79 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): TBC (ex TAX)

Zotac’s take on the GTX 660 2GB doesn’t look too different to the Zotac GTX 660 Ti 2GB amp! We looked at last month, but behind the black and orange trim this is more than just a case of swapping the GPU. The GTX 660 2GB uses an entirely new PCB design, although it remains extremely compact thanks to a 175mm long PCB. The card’s black cooler shroud does project out from the PCB though, taking the card to 180mm in length.


The card’s dual-slot cooler makes use of a dual-heatpipe configuration, with the heatpipes flattened and connected to a copper contact plate beneath the card’s aluminium heatsink. The heatpipes then spread out and run back through the heatsink to evenly distribute heat along the length of the card. A pair of down-draft cooling fans blows air down through the fin-stack, adding the benefit of cooling the PCB. However, as always, down-draft fans exhaust most of a GPU’s heat into your case, not out of the rear I/O, so ensure to allow for adequate case ventilation.


As with every GTX 660 2GB we’ve seen, the Zotac requires just a single top-mounted 6-pin PCI-E power connector, and also offers a single SLI-connector, allowing for dual, but not triple or quad-SLI setups. The rear I/O sees the standard set of 6-series outputs in the form of a pair of DVI ports, HDMI and a full-size Display Port, with all four supported at once for 3+1 screen gaming via Nvidia Surround.


This version of the card ships with Nvidia’s stock clock speeds of a base clock of 980Mhz and a boost clock of 1,033MHz, with Zotac’s amp! Edition of the same card offering the factory overclocked performance.

Stripping off the cooler sees the card’s power circuitry fitted to the right of the card (on the stock GTX 660 Ti 2GB and GTX 670 2GB, it’s fitted to the left, next to the I/O). There are 3 power phases for the GPU and single phase for the memory make for 4+1 phase power, but with a maximum TDP of 140W, it’s more than adequate. The power circuitry is also specifically cooled courtesy of a small aluminium heatsink.


The card’s memory configuration is a little odd however, with the eight 256MB GDDR5 modules split evenly between the front-side and back-side of the card. The modules on the front of the card are cooled via an aluminium contact plate, with the modules on the rear left bare. With only three memory controllers on the GPU, we can assume that, as with the GTX 660 Ti 2GB, one controller is connected to 1GB, with the other two served by 512MB each. This isn’t a problem though, as the GTX 660 GB supports mixed memory densities.