GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a core clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73792 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (about 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (approximately 118%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12720 (118%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.