GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which has GPU core speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 24 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
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 1413 (39%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 33216 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (about 87%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36400 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the GeForce GTX 660, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (43%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.