GeForce GTX 275 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which has a clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 850 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 288 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 275, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 18208 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 should be a lot (approximately 62%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19440 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be a bit (about 17%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3076 (17%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a 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 number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.