GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all that 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 particular card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 23040 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is quite a bit (approximately 54%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13176 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5940 (58%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure 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 in a second.

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