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GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 660 comes with a GPU core clock speed of 980 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory is set to run at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Radeon HD 7870 6230 points
GeForce GTX 660 5063 points
Difference: 1167 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 140 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 175 Watts
Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 144192 MB/sec
Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is just a bit (more or less 2%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 78400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 1600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 23520 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 8480 (36%)

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

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 660 Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year September 2012 March 2012
Code Name GK106 Pitcairn XT
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 980 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 6008 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 140 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 144192 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 78400 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 23520 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 960 1280
Texture Mapping Units 80 80
Render Output Units 24 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 192-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2540 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.0 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

2 Responses to “GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870”
Lange Überlegung - Kaufentscheidung - Gaming PC - Hilfe benötigt. - netzwelt.de Forum says:

[...] von AMD. Preislich auch um die 200€. Wenn du einen Vergleich deiner 660 und der 7870 möchtest Vergleich 660 mit 7870 Hierbei muss jedoch beachtet werden, das dieser Vergleich nur auf den reinen Daten basiert. [...]

LEEROY says:

HD 7870 is fair bit faster on paper, but the difference is greater in real world applications. Depending on the price (near enough identical in Australia, as of March 2013), go the HD7870. GTX660 is crippled by its memory bandwidth :c

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