GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 SE, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (240%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is quite a bit (more or less 52%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be much (approximately 76%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (76%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.