GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 870M, which has GPU clock speed of 941 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1344 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is quite a bit (more or less 238%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74192 (238%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1784 (9%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.