GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 480, which features a clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 924 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 480 SPUs, 60 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be just a bit (more or less 14%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5136 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (about 108%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.