GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 560

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 560, which comes with core clock speeds of 810 MHz on the GPU, and 1001 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 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 480		3650 points
GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
	Difference: 620 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 49280 (38%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be a little bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3360 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (30%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.