GeForce 9800 GTX+ 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 runs at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot better 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 is quite a bit (approximately 66%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31168 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11712 (99%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 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 card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.