GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB features a GPU core clock speed of 675 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM is set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with core clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 460 2GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 660 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 460 2GB	GeForce GTX 660
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	July 2010	September 2012
Code Name	GF104	GK106
Fab Process	40 nm	28 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	675 MHz	980 MHz
Shader Speed	1350 MHz	980 MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz (3600 MHz effective)	1502 MHz (6008 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	336	960
Texture Mapping Units	56	80
Render Output Units	32	24
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	192-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.3
Power (Max TDP)	160 watts	140 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	115200 MB/sec	144192 MB/sec
Texel Rate	37800 Mtexels/sec	78400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	21600 Mpixels/sec	23520 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.