GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should theoretically be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 3%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 936 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5472 (34%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.