GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 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

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 1167 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be just a bit (more or less 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (about 36%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8480 (36%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.