GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with clock speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (approximately 137%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42720 (137%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23552 (113%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.