GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which features a GPU core clock speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 850 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 288 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 SE, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (approximately 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be much (more or less 93%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (93%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.