GeForce GTX 260 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare that 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 is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 will be 72% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is quite a bit (about 249%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91904 (249%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (more or less 100%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.