GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a little bit (about 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (69%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.