GeForce GTS 450 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 uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 is 150% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 86464 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (more or less 213%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53344 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10992 (88%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.