GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460, which features a clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 is 50% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 28672 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be quite a bit (about 51%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12744 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3672 (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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 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 video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 get to the max fill rate.