GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57792 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (approximately 113%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (113%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (about 70%) better at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9720 (70%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.