GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units 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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 1327 (26%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 47808 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a small bit (more or less 13%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (more or less 26%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (26%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.