GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a bit (about 15%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a bit (approximately 16%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (16%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.