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GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 999 MHz on this particular model. It features 216 SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which features core speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units 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 should be 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (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 is a lot (more or less 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 is quite a bit (about 51%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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