GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has a clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28992 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (more or less 107%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40600 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (9%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could 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 colour ROPs by the the card's 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.