GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs 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

The GeForce GTX 660 should in theory perform a lot 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 should be much (more or less 27%) more effective at texture 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 a lot (approximately 34%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 260X, and also able to handle 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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.