GeForce GTX 660 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which has a clock speed of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 TAUs, and 64 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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 5804 (115%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 79808 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 39%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (about 186%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43680 (186%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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