GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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
Radeon HD 6850		2395 points
	Difference: 2668 (111%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16192 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (more or less 111%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41200 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be a small bit (more or less 5%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 660, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (5%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the 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 core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.