GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 680, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1006 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 is 72% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 80368 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (about 210%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87296 (210%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is quite a bit (about 100%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16064 (100%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.