GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which comes with a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 850 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 288 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
	Difference: 46720 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should be quite a bit (about 33%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (100%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.