GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be just a bit (more or less 3%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a little bit (approximately 17%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (17%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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.