GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 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 7850		5200 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 137 (3%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 42%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23360 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be just a bit (about 17%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (17%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.