GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be quite a bit (more or less 25%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9560 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9760 (82%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.