GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare that 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 is set to run at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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 quite a bit 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 is a lot (approximately 113%) better 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

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 46%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.