GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		6013 points
	Difference: 2212 (37%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 83% quicker than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a bit (about 16%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15920 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7640 (35%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.