GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which has a GPU core clock speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 Stream Processors, 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 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 1617 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (161%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 184128 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a bit (about 1%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 704 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34752 (148%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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.