GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which comes with a clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 924 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 68608 (63%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (more or less 35%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (about 62%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (62%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.