GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM 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.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3088 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be just a bit (about 1%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 464 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be much (more or less 29%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4672 (29%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.