GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 139008 (362%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 377%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33200 (377%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (664%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.