GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 26496 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a lot (about 27%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10360 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is just a bit (about 12%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2336 (12%)

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 moved over 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 it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.