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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 features a 448-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 216 SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with GPU core speed of 607 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 837 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also features 448 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 40 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 is 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 22032 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be a lot (approximately 22%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7480 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be much (more or less 51%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8152 (51%)

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

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GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm	GeForce GTX 470
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	December 22, 2008	March 2010
Code Name	G200b	GF100
Memory	896 MB	1280 MB
Core Speed	576 MHz	607 MHz
Memory Speed	1998 MHz	3348 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	171 watts	215 watts
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	133920 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41472 Mtexels/sec	33992 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	24280 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	216	448
Texture Mapping Units	72	56
Render Output Units	28	40
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	320-bit
Fab Process	55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	1400 million	3000 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 card can possibly record 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

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