GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with a clock frequency of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 837 MHz. It also uses a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 448 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 280 should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 7776 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be quite a bit (more or less 42%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14168 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (about 26%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5016 (26%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.