GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 154 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 78% quicker than the GeForce GTX 660 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 111808 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 196%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 153600 (196%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 69280 (295%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

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 within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.