GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (220%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be 300% quicker than the GeForce GT 420 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be quite a bit (more or less 575%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32200 (575%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (671%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.