GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with a clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is a lot (more or less 330%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29000 (330%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be quite a bit (more or less 268%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11800 (268%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.