Radeon HD 8970 OEM vs GeForce GTX 660

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	433	not rated
Place by popularity	58	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	3.27	no data
Power efficiency	5.15	no data
Architecture	Kepler (2012−2018)	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code name	GK106	Tahiti
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	6 September 2012 (12 years ago)	8 January 2013 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$229	no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	960	2048
Core clock speed	980 MHz	925 MHz
Boost clock speed	1033 MHz	no data
Number of transistors	2,540 million	4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	140 Watt	250 Watt
Texture fill rate	82.56	118.4
Floating-point processing power	1.981 TFLOPS	3.789 TFLOPS
ROPs	24	32
TMUs	80	128

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	241 mm	274 mm
Height	4.376" (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
SLI options	+	-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	2 GB	3 GB
Memory bus width	192-bit GDDR5	384 Bit
Memory clock speed	6.0 GB/s	1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth	144.2 GB/s	264.0 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	One Dual Link DVI-I, One Dual Link DVI-D, One HDMI, One DisplayPort	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	4 displays	no data
HDMI	+	+
HDCP	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	Internal	no data

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

3D Blu-Ray	+	-
3D Gaming	+	-
3D Vision	+	-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (11_0)	12 (11_1)
Shader Model	5.1	5.1
OpenGL	4.3	4.6
OpenCL	1.2	1.2
Vulkan	1.1.126	1.2.131
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	6 September 2012	8 January 2013
Maximum RAM amount	2 GB	3 GB
Power consumption (TDP)	140 Watt	250 Watt

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