GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 926 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1650 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 470 4GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 67008 (46%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB will be much (about 51%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40128 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 470 4GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6112 (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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.