GeForce GTX 560 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which features a clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 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 660		5063 points
GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
	Difference: 2033 (67%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 16064 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (about 73%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33040 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is just a bit (approximately 10%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated 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 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 the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.