GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 7950		7731 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 2668 (53%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 will be 66% quicker than the GeForce GTX 660 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 95808 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 will be just a bit (approximately 14%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (9%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.