GeForce GTX 660 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 5804 (115%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 79808 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 39%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 186%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (186%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.