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GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

The GeForce GTX 280 features a clock speed of 602 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1107 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 240 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which has core clock speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 140 Watts
GeForce GTX 280 236 Watts
Difference: 96 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 144192 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280 141696 MB/sec
Difference: 2496 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (about 63%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280 48160 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 30240 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (about 22%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280 19264 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4256 (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

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

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GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 280 GeForce GTX 660
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year June 17, 2008 September 2012
Code Name G200 GK106
Memory 1024 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 602 MHz 980 MHz
Memory Speed 2214 MHz 6008 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 236 watts 140 watts
Bandwidth 141696 MB/sec 144192 MB/sec
Texel Rate 48160 Mtexels/sec 78400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19264 Mpixels/sec 23520 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 240 960
Texture Mapping Units 80 80
Render Output Units 32 24
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 512-bit 192-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1400 million 2540 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTX 660

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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