GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 580		4956 points
	Difference: 107 (2%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (approximately 59%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.