GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 288 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (183%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be much (approximately 255%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (255%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (373%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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.