GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with core speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 is 33% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35392 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a lot (more or less 151%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (151%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a little bit (more or less 13%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2720 (13%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.