GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 870M, which has core clock speeds of 941 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be a lot (approximately 190%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68992 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 get to the max fill rate.