GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which features a GPU core clock speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 960 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 will be 33% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35392 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 115%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42000 (115%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be just a bit (about 13%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (13%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.