GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a core clock frequency of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 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

Radeon R9 295X2		21205 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 16142 (319%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 360 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be 344% faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 495808 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 357%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 279936 (357%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 106784 (454%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated 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 video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.