GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 features a GPU clock speed of 576 MHz, and the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 999 MHz through a 448-bit bus. It also features 216 Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 28 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which has GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 850 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 288 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.