GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1625 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 682 (16%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 is 39% quicker than the Radeon R7 260X overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (more or less 27%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (more or less 34%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R7 260X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5920 (34%)

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 across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of 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 clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.