GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 850 MHz on this card. It features 288 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE is 89% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (89%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB will be a bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (117%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.