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GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 660 makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a little bit (about 15%) faster with regards to AF 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 is a small bit (about 16%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 660 Radeon HD 5870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year September 2012 September 23, 2009
Code Name GK106 Cypress XT
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 980 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 6008 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 140 watts 188 watts
Bandwidth 144192 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 78400 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 23520 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 960 1600(320x5)
Texture Mapping Units 80 80
Render Output Units 24 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 192-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2540 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.0 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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