GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which comes with a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 850 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 3% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a small bit (approximately 1%) more effective at texture 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, and very much so. (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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 maximum fill rate.