GTX660 launch date confirmed – 16th August

Each generation of graphic card contains a champion, one card that not only outsells most of the market – but does so at a sensible price point and healthy margin. For nVidia, in 2012, that card is the GTX660. KitGuru finds launch plans on a train to Timbuktu and informs you.

Let's be honest, graphics card companies want you to spend £500 on a card and then add a second one a few months later, in an SLi or CrossFire configuration.

Customers, on the other hand, are often happy with the ‘free' graphics that come integrated into the CPU and/or mainboard.

Which presents a dilemma.

The solution is to create a card that's highly affordable (i.e. as far under £150 as you can sensibly go) and feature-rich.  You then push hard with the magazines and hope that they believe your specific combination of performance and price is enough to open up the credit card of confirmed customer choice [Er, you mean buy one? – Ed].

For nVidia and the Kepler-powered series of 600 family cards, the killer is expected to be the GTX660 – but how long will punters have to wait?

News into KitGuru from a friendly engineer in sunny California, is that 16th August will see the new cards launched.

Palit and other major nVidia partners have bought up the last of the 570 GPUs and flushed them into the market at bargain prices, leaving the way clear for the GTX660 to rock Q4. Our sources in Taiwan told us that this was a crucial part of the strategy, because a well priced GTX570 would make the GTX660 look bad.

The reference cards are being built by nVidia as we type and sample product will roll into EVGA, Palit and the rest shortly.

KitGuru says: The 9600, 460 and 560 were all classics in their way and – unless nVidia gets the price totally wrong -there's no reason to suspect that the GTX660 won't be the most successful card for the second half of this year.

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