GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 570, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 732 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 950 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 40 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 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 570 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 40112 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a little bit (about 6%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2448 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a lot (about 82%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13152 (82%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.