GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 780, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 863 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 192 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 173184 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be quite a bit (about 338%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 127896 (338%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 should be much (about 92%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19824 (92%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.