NVIDIA GeForce 6600 vs FX 5900

Because two graphics cards have the same number of ROPs, and the GeForce FX 5900 is clocked higher, it also has higher pixel fillrate. Better pixel fill rate means that the graphics card can draw more pixels on and off screen each second, increasing overall performance, unless there are bottlenecks somewhere else.

In modern games, pixel fillrate is less important than texture fill rate. This parameter is calculated as the number of TMUs (Texture Mapping Units), multiplied by graphics frequency. Since both GPUs have the same number of TMUs and the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 is clocked higher, its texture fillrate is higher. Better texture fill rate means that the graphics card can apply more textures and/or use more sophisticated 3D effects for each textured picture element, which improves visual appearance of games and generated images.

 

To speed up processing, the cards store 3D scene data, textures and intermediate data, used for image generation, in on-board memory. The video memory usually has much higher bandwidth than system RAM, and more bandwidth allows the graphics card to run at higher display resolutions, use larger and more detailed textures, and apply more complex 3D effects and filters. The bandwidth depends on memory type, speed, and width of memory interface. Specifically, higher memory bandwidth of the GeForce FX 5900 is due to higher memory clock and wider bus.