GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 675 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 43%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (227%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.