GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (33%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be much (approximately 33%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (33%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.