GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with 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 GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 3610 (248%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 660 should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (about 213%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.