GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
Radeon HD 7790		4330 points
	Difference: 733 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 7790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48192 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (more or less 40%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (more or less 47%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7520 (47%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.