GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this specific model. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units 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

The GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ overall. (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 (more or less 66%) more effective 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 using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.