GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which has clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 24 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 660		5063 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 107 (2%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 48192 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (more or less 59%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28992 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (more or less 58%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (58%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.