GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which has GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 850 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 288 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is much (more or less 21%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA 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 GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4600 (28%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.