GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 590, which features a clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 855 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (128%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 213120 (185%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be quite a bit (more or less 106%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39896 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (170%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.