GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 675 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 57472 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is quite a bit (about 51%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12744 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9072 (72%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.