GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (approximately 40%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the Radeon HD 7790, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.