GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a core clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 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
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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot better 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 is a little bit (about 8%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, though not by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 in one 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.