GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 999 MHz on this card. It features 216 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.