GeForce GTX 660 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has a GPU core clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 2457 (49%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48192 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a small bit (about 6%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4480 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 89%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20832 (89%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.