Geforce GTX 660 Ti can be lowered by odd memory configuration

In mid-August, Nvidia will release a new graphics card with the architecture Kepler. Upcoming Geforce GTX 660 Ti very similar to today’s GTX 670, which includes the graphics processor GK104 and 1,344 CUDA cores. The main difference is instead that the memory bus shrinks from 256 to 192 bits.

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1 Specifications

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Specifications

	Geforce GTX 660 Ti	Geforce GTX 670
Architecture	Kepler	Kepler
Technical	28 nm	28 nm
GPU	GK104 (?)	GK104
CUDA cores	1 344 st.	1 344 st.
Base frequency	915 MHz	915 MHz
Boost frequency	980 MHz	980 MHz
Memory bus	192-bit	256-bit
Memory amount	2 GB GDDR5	2 GB GDDR5
Memory frequency	6 008 MHz	6 008 MHz
TDP	150 W	170 W

The fact that there will be no major news other than that, however, gives partner manufacturers the opportunity to use basically the same circuit board and cooler as for the Geforce GTX 670. According to SweClockers, this means that there will be a variety of variants already on launch day, with everything from intimidated clock frequencies for different memory configurations: 2.0 and 3.0 GB.

The latter can be interesting from a performance point of view. In the basic version, the Geforce GTX 660 Ti is equipped with the unusual 2 GB GDDR5 memory configuration on a 192-bit memory bus. This means that Nvidia will probably use four memory circuits, where each circuit is connected to a 32-bit data bus. The remaining four circuits share the two remaining 32-bit buses.

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This means that half of the memory circuits only have access to half as much memory bandwidth as the others, which risks adversely affecting performance if an application uses more than 1 GB of video memory.

The alternative is that Nvidia initially equipped the graphics card with 3 GB of memory and limited the amount of memory to 2 GB by, for example, adjusting this in the software. This would give equal bandwidth to all memory circuits and would also explain why models with 3 GB of memory are introduced by partner manufacturers already on the launch day.

Exactly how it is with that bit will probably be revealed on August 16, which so far is the preliminary launch date for the Geforce GTX 660 Ti. By chance, the Gamescom gaming fair starts on August 15, which may have something to do with Nvidia’s choice of date.