GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this model. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 32304 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (approximately 113%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41536 (113%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7392 (46%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.