GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 4123 (161%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 241920 (280%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be a lot (approximately 106%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42072 (260%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.