Nvidia EVGA GTX 660 SC: A Budget Gamer's Dream.
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So many people overlook the older mid-range GPU's when it comes to games. "What's the newest card I can afford" often comes to mind, before considering the older solutions for graphically demanding software. EVGA has brought this card back to kind with a refresh of some older hardware, and an impressive one at that. As a two year old card, the GTX 660 doesn't get a lot said about it anymore. But EVGA decided they could squeeze more out of it. So they took their already Factory Overclocked card, and improved the VRM so they could push more power through it, tuned the cooling, and boosted the clock speed even more. So now here we have it, a card that can push 1080P gaming pretty admirably, at only $200. As I've had hands on with this card for a while now, and as I run 2 21" Monitors at a resolution of 1280 x 1024, this card is a beast. It runs just about anything on Ultra settings, with V-sync and even Moderate Tesselation at between 60-80 Frames Per Second. I've brought it to it's knees once with Unigine Heaven running on highest settings on both monitors, but even then it got a 27 FPS average, very respectable for a $200 card. In it's price bracket, there is a bit of a gap. It's competitors occupy the $100-$150 and $250-$300 price brackets, and it sits fairly lonely in the $200 niche. It has some extremely impressive overclocking abilities, pushing an unheard of 1400 MHz when overclocked to the extreme. As an EVGA card, it will overclock itself, and has no problem keeping itself cool. Even under high duress, this card has never risen above 70 Celsius, and the fan has never gone above 60%. Overall, extremely impressed with this card, would give it a 9/10 for the price. I plan on sticking with EVGA for the rest of my journey with PC's as much as possible. Thanks for reading my review!
