GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 850 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3088 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will be a small bit (more or less 14%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5072 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be quite a bit (more or less 29%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4672 (29%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.