GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 1823 (56%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 15808 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be just a bit (approximately 11%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (9%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.