GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 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

GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 3166 (167%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 is 46% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 45696 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (more or less 172%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49600 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a little bit (approximately 9%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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