GeForce GTX 660 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 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

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

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (about 39%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 should be a lot (about 186%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.