GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
	Difference: 1593 (46%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 31808 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a bit (about 8%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be just a bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4640 (20%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.