GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features GPU clock speed of 941 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 1344 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (more or less 179%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67592 (179%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 984 (5%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.