GeForce 8800 GS 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 is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot (approximately 43%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (145%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a 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 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.