GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 675 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be just a bit (about 4%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1368 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (47%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.