GeForce GTX 660 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960, which comes with core clock speeds of 1127 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 2564 (51%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32192 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be just a bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6272 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (approximately 53%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12544 (53%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.