MSI updated their GeForce GTX 660 lineup with a new GAMING model to undoubtedly profit from the good reputation of GAMING cards, and for the sake of launching a new GTX 660 at a time when people are shopping for upgrades that meet recommended system specs of this year's big fall-winter game launches (think Battlefield 4, COD: Ghosts, etc.). The new GTX 660 GAMING comes with a relatively average overclock out of the box, which results in a real-life improvement of 6% over the GTX 660 reference-design. The closest card from AMD is the Radeon HD 7870, which is around 3% slower. This means that you can play most titles at 1080p if you are willing to sacrifice AA and some other details. It would have been nice to see a bigger overclock, and a memory overclock; both should have been quite easy as we've seen such cards in the past.
MSI's new cooler does a good job at keeping the card cool, and it's also extremely quiet in idle. While it is also quiet under load, it could have been much quieter, given the load temperature is only 62°C. Power consumption is pretty much the same as the reference design, so we have nothing to report there.
With a price of $210, the MSI GTX 660 GAMING is not a cheap GTX 660. What makes this even more of an issue is that MSI's own GTX 660 TwinFrozr OC (our review) is sold for $199, and comes with higher clocks out of the box. It is also quieter and uses memory chips that overclock a bit better. Even though the GTX 660 GAMING is a good card, I'm having a bit of a hard time recommending it when there are clearly better alternatives, even from MSI itself. Some price reductions would probably help.