GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm comes with a clock speed of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 999 MHz. It also uses a 448-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 216 SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which features a core clock frequency of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 837 MHz. It also features a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 448 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 40 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.