GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 260 Core 216

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, which has clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 216 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at AF. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at AA, and be able to handle the same resolutions. (explain)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.