GeForce GTX 295 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has core clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (106%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 79584 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be just a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8736 (37%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.