GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot superior to 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 a lot (approximately 81%) more effective at anisotropic 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 will be a lot (more or less 118%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.