GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 features a clock speed of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 999 MHz. It also features a 448-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which has clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 260 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 460 SE Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 260	GeForce GTX 460 SE
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	June 16, 2008	November 2010
Code Name	G200	GF104
Fab Process	65 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	576 MHz	650 MHz
Shader Speed	1242 MHz	1300 MHz
Memory Speed	999 MHz	850 MHz
Unified Shaders	192	288
Texture Mapping Units	64	48
Render Output Units	28	32
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	182 watts	150 watts
Shader Model	4.0	5.0
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	108800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	36864 Mtexels/sec	31200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	20800 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.