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GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 660 uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this specific model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (about 50%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26200 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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

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Radeon HD 5850

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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 5850
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	September 2012	September 30, 2009
Code Name	GK106	Cypress PRO
Memory	2048 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	980 MHz	725 MHz
Memory Speed	6008 MHz	4000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	140 watts	151 watts
Bandwidth	144192 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	78400 Mtexels/sec	52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	23520 Mpixels/sec	23200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	960	1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units	80	72
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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

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