GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which features a core clock speed of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1664 SPUs, 104 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 8310 (325%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (159%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be much (about 189%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71400 (189%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51000 (315%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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