GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which has clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should be 2% quicker than the GeForce GTX 280 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 2496 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (approximately 63%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30240 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (approximately 22%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (22%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.