C++ AMP crashing on hardware (GeForce GTX 660)

It is very likely that your computation exceeds permitted quantum time (default 2 seconds). After that time the operating systems comes in and restarts the GPU forcefully, this is called Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR). The software adapter (reference device) does not have the TDR enabled, that is why the computation can exceed permitted quantum time.

Does your computation really require 3000 threads (variable x), each performing 2000 * 3000 (x * y) loop iterations? You can chunk your computation, such that each chunks takes less than 2 seconds to compute. You can also consider disabling TDR or exceeding the permitted quantum time to fit your need.

I highly recommend reading a blog post on how to handle TDRs in C++ AMP, which explains TDR in details: blogs.msdn.com/b/nativeconcurrency/archive/2012/03/07/handling-tdrs-in-c-amp.aspx

Additionally, here is the separate blog post on how to disable the TDR on Windows 8:
blogs.msdn.com/b/nativeconcurrency/archive/2012/03/06/disabling-tdr-on-windows-8-for-your-c-amp-algorithms.aspx