GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a clock frequency of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 48192 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (about 59%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28992 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (58%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out 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 per 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 calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.