GeForce GTX 470 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 480, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 924 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
GeForce GTX 470		2937 points
	Difference: 713 (24%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 43488 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (about 24%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8008 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9320 (38%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.