GeForce GTX 275 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which comes with clock speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 275 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 6912 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be quite a bit (more or less 49%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16648 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be a lot (approximately 37%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 275, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6556 (37%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.