GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 43776 (38%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be much (about 37%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14040 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 864 (4%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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