GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 590, which comes with a core clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 855 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (128%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be 185% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 213120 (185%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be quite a bit (approximately 106%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39896 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (170%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 maximum fill rate.