GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has core speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically be a lot 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 will be quite a bit (about 59%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (more or less 58%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.