GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a small bit (approximately 15%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (16%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.