GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 480, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 924 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 285 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 18432 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB is a lot (more or less 23%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9840 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is quite a bit (more or less 62%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12864 (62%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.