[wccftech.com]660 at the end of June?

[JTsyo]

Article

-660 based on GK104
-No Ti version
-1.5GB RAM

all this is based on MSI confirming a third GK104 card. (Not sure how they know it's a 660 and not a 600Ti.) And from specification of a Acer Predator G3620 that says it will have a 660 and will be available on June 25th. [VideoCardz]source for that leak.

 

[Don Karnage]

Damnit i was just going to post this

If true the 1.5GB of memory is a huge mistake

 

[Phynaz]

It would be great for me for this to come out that early, I really want one for my gaming system build.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Damnit i was just going to post this

If true the 1.5GB of memory is a huge mistake

No, intentional, don't want to undercut their own card like with the 560ti. Plus it is a huge cost savings on a midrange card like this = profit margins.

 

[KompuKare]

No, intentional, don't want to undercut their own card like with the 560ti. Plus it is a huge cost savings on a midrange card like this = profit margins.

I'm sure their profit margin on GK104 cards are high enough already (those 670 PCBs sure look cheap). But what kind of weird arrangement of memery chips gives them 1.5GB on a 256 bit bus?

 

[tviceman]

Damnit i was just going to post this

If true the 1.5GB of memory is a huge mistake

I don't think so. The card will perform between an hd7950 and hd7870, so maybe about as fast, or a tiny bit faster than a gtx580, so long as Nvidia keeps the vram clocked at 6ghz. People running 1440p or multi monitor setups won't likely be looking at this card for their setup, so for 1080p (the popular resolution) it shouldn't be an issue 95% of the time. Nvidia is going to be able to utilize more GK104 throw-away chips with this sku, something AMD apparently either can't or is having a hard time doing because of the nominal performance difference between the hd7950 and hd7870.

 

[tviceman]

I'm sure their profit margin on GK104 cards are high enough already (those 670 PCBs sure look cheap). But what kind of weird arrangement of memery chips gives them 1.5GB on a 256 bit bus?

It will have 1 memory controller disabled, giving it a 192-bit bus.

 

[JTsyo]

Damnit i was just going to post this

If true the 1.5GB of memory is a huge mistake

I'm sure we'll see some customs that are around 2GB.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm sure we'll see some customs that are around 2GB.

not if its 192bit as indicated.

It would be either 768MB, 1.5GB or 3.0GB

1.5GB is plenty for 1080p gaming though, which is the main target of the card.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Any idea of cost?

 

[jacktesterson]

Any idea of cost?

I'm guessing based on Rumored performance, it would be around $300-330 bucks.

 

[Don Karnage]

Should be able to do 1250 boost core and perform great

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Dammit why can't there be a current Gen NVIDIA part for 2-250!

 

[toyota]

not if its 192bit as indicated.

It would be either 768MB, 1.5GB or 3.0GB

1.5GB is plenty for 1080p gaming though, which is the main target of the card.

even on 192bit Nvidia themselves could make it a 2gb card but the mismatched memory size does not perform as well so hopefully they will not fool with it.

Damnit i was just going to post this

If true the 1.5GB of memory is a huge mistake

http://wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wccf-660-copy.jpg

1.5 gb will not really be an issue at this level of card now but it may prove to be an issue sooner than we think.

 

[Bryson777]

I'm guessing based on Rumored performance, it would be around $300-330 bucks.

Ouch! $300-330 = no mans land. How will the 660 compare to the 7850 with it's 2gb ram and high overclockablity? At $330 I'd rather spend a bit more and just get the GTX 670.

 

[toyota]

Ouch! $300-330 = no mans land. How will the 660 compare to the 7850 with it's 2gb ram and high overclockablity? At $330 I'd rather spend a bit more and just get the GTX 670.

wait to see how it performs. the gtx670 surprised most people by being within 5% of the gtx680 clock for clock. even if the gtx660 is 15-20% slower than the gtx670, it will still easily beat a 7870 never mind the 7850. probably only the very highest oced 7850 cards out there will get near the stock gtx660.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

wait to see how it performs. the gtx670 surprised most people by being within 5% of the gtx680 clock for clock. even if the gtx660 is 15-20% slower than the gtx670, it will still easily beat a 7870 never mind the 7850. probably only the very highest oced 7850 cards out there will get near the stock gtx660.

I believe the frustration here is that the 7850 is verifiably able to overclock past the 7870 at a $250 price tag. When you're looking at spending another $50-80 more, it's not hitting the sweet-spot incremental upgraders are looking for. $200-$250 is the typical price range for that and we're not seeing the products we should be seeing from Nvidia at those prices. At this point, an incremental upgrader might as well just sit this series out for another year. Sure, they're faster cards. That said, we are not getting the kind of performance increases at moderate pricing that we did the last time around. A year from now might be a better time for looking at a better video card. If you have a 560 or 6870, you might as well sit out this round, unless you want to go for a 7850. Some like Nvidia better, so it's understandable that they'd be frustrated at the lack of offerings available at a comparatively reasonable price. AMD has offerings from $100-$500. Nvidia does not.

 

[KompuKare]

wait to see how it performs. the gtx670 surprised most people by being within 5% of the gtx680 clock for clock. even if the gtx660 is 15-20% slower than the gtx670, it will still easily beat a 7870 never mind the 7850. probably only the very highest oced 7850 cards out there will get near the stock gtx660.

192/256 is 75% so the question of how it performs would have a lot to do with how dependent on memory speed GK104 is. Some of the 680/670 overclockers around here could chime in with happens when you underclock it's memory to 75% or so.

Being a cheaper board, it's also possible that actual memory clock speeds will be lower so 75% bus size is by no means the whole story. Plus whatever else is cut-down.

 

[toyota]

192/256 is 75% so the question of how it performs would have a lot to do with how dependent on memory speed GK104 is. Some of the 680/670 overclockers around here could chime in with happens when you underclock it's memory to 75% or so.

Being a cheaper board, it's also possible that actual memory clock speeds will be lower so 75% bus size is by no means the whole story. Plus whatever else is cut-down.

really going to depend on the game. for Metro 2033 and AvP on max or almost settings max settings it will dive. most other games it will probably be average of 15% difference. that why I am thinking 15-20% difference overall.

I will lower my bandwidth to around 144 and test a few games though.

EDIT: I cant lower me memory that low as it only goes to -500mhz which will be 5200mhz for me and that is 166gb/s.

 

[KompuKare]

EDIT: I cant lower me memory that low as it only goes to -500mhz which will be 5200mhz for me and that is 166gb/s.

Foiled by GPU Boost again. Oh well. I'm not in the market for anything in this price range anyhow just speculating.

 

[toyota]

Foiled by GPU Boost again. Oh well. I'm not in the market for anything in this price range anyhow just speculating.

gpu boost has nothing to do with it though. the sliders simply dont allow the memory speed to be put that low. I dont think I could lower my memory by 1600mhz(effective) below stock clocks on any card I have owned.

 

[Dark Shroud]

And anyone who still thinks 1.5GB is plenty good enough for 1080p needs to watch the footage from E3 of games coming out later this year.

I don't see how this can go against the 7800 series cards or the 670.

 

[toyota]

And anyone who still thinks 1.5GB is plenty good enough for 1080p needs to watch the footage from E3 of games coming out later this year.

I don't see how this can go against the 7800 series cards or the 670.

well 1.5 gb of vram will be probably enough for the settings this card can run in 99% of cases.

 

[chimaxi83]

192/256 is 75% so the question of how it performs would have a lot to do with how dependent on memory speed GK104 is. Some of the 680/670 overclockers around here could chime in with happens when you underclock it's memory to 75% or so.

Being a cheaper board, it's also possible that actual memory clock speeds will be lower so 75% bus size is by no means the whole story. Plus whatever else is cut-down.

Test with my core at 1430MHz, and VRAM at 7008 (+500 offset)

Test with my core at 1430MHz, and VRAM underclocked as far as Afterburner would let me (-502 offset), to an effective 5012MHz

Lost roughly 700 points in graphics score... nothing major considering the underclock. I've found that overclocking VRAM doesn't really scale well. Going from stock 6008MHz effective to 7100MHz effective got me about 600 points maybe.

 

[toyota]

ram speed does make much difference in 3DMark. it does help in some games though. it scales great in Red Faction Guerrilla, Metro 2033, and Alien vs Predator.