GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 650

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 999 MHz on this specific card. It features 216 SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 650, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1058 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.