GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be 30% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25488 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is a bit (about 10%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3672 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a bit (about 0%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.