A Closer Look

While the cooler shroud looks like that of typical MSI GAMING models, the heatsink base is completely different. MSI tends to use multiple heatpipes that sit below a heat-spreading baseplate making contact with the GPU core. Here, we see two heatpipes that have been milled down to touch the GPU surface directly, looking more like early versions of the ASUS DirectCU approach.


The card requires a single 6-pin PCI-Express power cable for operation. This power configuration is good for up to 150 W of power draw.


MSI uses an NCP5395 voltage controller on the GTX 660 GAMING, which is a cost-effective design that lacks software control and advanced monitoring.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Elpida and carry the model number W2032BBBG-60-F. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GK106 processor is produced on a 28 nm at TSMC, Taiwan. The transistor count is 2.54 billion.