GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which features core 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 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 5120 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a lot (more or less 26%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7968 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be much (approximately 42%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6112 (42%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.