GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which comes with a clock frequency of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

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 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 1617 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (161%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 184128 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is a bit (about 1%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 704 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34752 (148%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.