GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which has GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 924 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 65520 (59%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 528 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (more or less 108%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17472 (108%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 max fill rate.