GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1625 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units 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 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, the GeForce GTX 660 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (about 27%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 34%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 260X, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.