GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 will be 94% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (more or less 281%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 106328 (281%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 50464 (234%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.