GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 680, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1006 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 should be 77% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83456 (77%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is much (more or less 254%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92368 (254%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be quite a bit (about 55%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11392 (55%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.