GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460, which features a core clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8800 GS in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is quite a bit (approximately 43%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is a lot (more or less 145%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GS, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (145%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.