GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 682 (16%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (about 27%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5920 (34%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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.