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MSI Geforce GTX660 Twin Frozr Test
Hey guys,
I've recently been to the MSI office to test the new GTX660 graphics card. Originally I wanted to do the same style of review as I did with the 7870 Hawk so include all the mods, bioses and ln2 results, but it turned out to be a regular test. Mainly because the vGPU IC that is used (NCP5395) is not that easy to mod (click) and because there's no extreme OC bios available. As some of you might know, Nvidia has full control over the xtreme oc bioses. Vendors have to request an extreme oc bios from Nvidia and especially with low-end and mainstream cards that's not always easy. Once an extreme oc bios is available, I'll update this thread with the XOC results for sure! Pictures System Details - Intel Core i7 3960X C2 (ES) - MSI Big Bang-XPower II (bios V1.4) - Kingston HyperX Genesis KHX2400C11D3/2GX (4x 2GB) - MSI Geforce GTX 660 Twin Frozr - Enermax Revolution 87+ - Windows 7 64-bit (Chinese!) - Forceware 306.23 Results: Overview  Results: 1x GPU Stock Results: 2x GPU Stock Results: 1x GPU OC (+100/+400) Results: 2x GPU OC (+50/+300) Conclusive lines Overall, I'm not all too displeased with this card. It's an okay mainstream card with mainstream performance. Being primarily an overclocker, I must say I'm a little disappointed by the lack of proper voltage control. Afterburner did not work correctly during my testing, but even if it would work it would still only provide the voltage range Nvidia allows for the GTX660. The Vgpu controller, NCP5395, has no I2C support. That means no software can be used to increase the voltage beyond stock. You will need to do the hardmod, which also is not as easy as it should(?) be. The driver used also had some stability issues in the 3DMark Vantage benchmark. The benchmark would crash when not being the first application opened after a reboot. When overclocked, SLI would always fail. This is a driver issue and should be resolved in next releases. As said, overall I'm definitely not disappointed, but also not extatic about this graphics card. It's mainstream, so delivers mainstream performance with mainstream overclocking capability. I might retest this card once new drivers are out and if I had the courage to start modding the NCP5395  .'Till the next time! Addendum:  About the award: MMB+ stands for Meaningless Marketer Bonus Plus (meaningless refering to the award, not the marketer!). The award has no value outside this forum and is not related to the product quality in any way. It's merely to please the person who gives me a kit to test and help him/her to show an award to their boss. This way, me not giving a damn about awards will never harm anyone in terms of yearly bonus. If you want to know how the product really is, read the thread and read other reviews. So, seriously, this award is pretty meaningless.
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Where courage, motivation and ignorance meet, a persistent idiot awakens. Things people say: Massman is a god (05-02-2102), You're a genius (25-10-2011), Massman, overlord of overclocking (07-30-2010), brain dead corporate dude that deserves to be stillborn (09-18-2010) Things I write: Critical thinking - Should Maximus V Extreme be banned from competitive overclocking?, HWBOT Vision 2012, The Industry’s Social Responsibilities – Support the Community., In Response to Chew's Goodbye Note (the unhealthy relation between company and community), The X58A-OC, the enthusiast community and a long-term vision, The Efficiency Rating, Hardware sharing, nostra culpa?, The paradox of a fair overclocking competition, HWBOT Memory Index v0.1, AMD Thuban Voltage and Temperature Scaling, Is LN2 on GPU really worth the trouble? 
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#2
09-17-2012, 04:50
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NVP5395 bunny... so we are waiting for Hawk
Nice pics, you had really great fun and honest final words, I like it.BTW I remember Gigabyte sending those 275 SOC modded by "factory" to overclockers lol
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 MSI MOA 2009 POLAND #3 Gigabyte GOOC 2010 POLAND #2 MSI MOA 2010 POLAND - NOT ORGANISED ASUS Polish Overclocking Championship 2010 #1 MSI MOA 2011 POLAND - NOT INVITED HWBOT Country Cup 2011 - POLAND! #1 MSI MOA 2012 EMEA - #1 MSI MOA 2012 WW FINALS - #7 ASUS Open Overclocking Cup AOOC 2012 - #1 HWBOT Country Cup 2012 - POLAND! #2 ASUS Open Overclocking Cup AOOC 2013 - #?
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#4
09-17-2012, 12:09
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Quote:
The NCP5395 has VID settings, so if you have a chip with I2C that controls the VID it's quite easy .Quote:
__________________
Where courage, motivation and ignorance meet, a persistent idiot awakens. Things people say: Massman is a god (05-02-2102), You're a genius (25-10-2011), Massman, overlord of overclocking (07-30-2010), brain dead corporate dude that deserves to be stillborn (09-18-2010) Things I write: Critical thinking - Should Maximus V Extreme be banned from competitive overclocking?, HWBOT Vision 2012, The Industry’s Social Responsibilities – Support the Community., In Response to Chew's Goodbye Note (the unhealthy relation between company and community), The X58A-OC, the enthusiast community and a long-term vision, The Efficiency Rating, Hardware sharing, nostra culpa?, The paradox of a fair overclocking competition, HWBOT Memory Index v0.1, AMD Thuban Voltage and Temperature Scaling, Is LN2 on GPU really worth the trouble?
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