GeForce GTX 1060 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare all that to the Geforce GTX 680, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1006 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 1060		12359 points
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 4709 (62%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1060 should be a little bit faster than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 4352 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a small bit (about 7%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 1060. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8288 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be quite a bit (about 125%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Geforce GTX 680, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40096 (125%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.