GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (more or less 96%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36120 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 105%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22752 (105%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.