GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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
Radeon HD 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 1823 (56%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 15808 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a bit (about 11%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a bit (approximately 9%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.