GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is 11% faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a little bit (more or less 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1368 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (47%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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