MSI GTX 660Ti Power Edition OC Video Card Review

When searching for a new video card enthusiasts are often presented with a wide variety of things to contend with from overall performance and price to which cooling method matches my style of gaming and overclocking.  If you look at the MSI GTX 660Ti product offerings you have two basic choices.  The first is a stock GTX 660Ti as released by NVidia and the second being the MSI N660Ti-Power Edition 2GD/OC.  Of course the second of these promises higher performance with a great price point for gamers.

The MSI N660Ti Power Edition OC has many things going for it starting with the new GTX 660Ti GPU.  This may be a revised version of the GTX 670 but it has plenty of power for most games and can clearly give the Radeon HD7970 a run for its money.  Most of that power comes from the factory overclock that helps to offset the limitations of the 192-bit memory controller.

MSI has enhanced the PWM design to include a 5+2-phase PWM for better overclocking and power stability.  The new design can supply the GPU with 17% more power which is just better for everyone.
 
Overclocking is a big part of the enthusiast community so we tend to look for special card designs that help us overclock without having to resort to extensive board modifications or insane cooling solutions.  The MSI N660Ti Power Edition OC fits that profile by offering us a custom PCB design with a larger PWM and Twin Frozr IV thermal solution.  These features are designed to enhance the factory overclock and allowed us to run the core up to 1170Mhz with a memory clock of 1752Mhz.  The overclock did require a slight voltage bump using MSI Afterburner but was well within what we would consider safe.

Twin Frozr IV Cooler
Custom PCB Design
5+2 Phase PWM
Factory Overclocked
Cool and Quiet Operation

No fancy LED lights on the PCB
Fans are quite loud under load