GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which comes with core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (26%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is a lot (about 51%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (51%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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