GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with GPU clock speed of 675 MHz, and 768 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 Stream Processors, 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 GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25488 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should be a little bit (approximately 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3672 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 72 (0%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.