GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 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 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 2668 (111%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (about 111%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41200 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is just a bit (approximately 5%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (5%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.