GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 2193 (76%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9792 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (approximately 56%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (56%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (22%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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