GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1126 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 is 94% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (about 281%) faster with regards to 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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, by far. (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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.