GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1502 MHz on this specific model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 58176 (68%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a little bit (approximately 17%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11584 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be quite a bit (approximately 42%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9888 (42%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.