GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 470, which features core speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 should be 23% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25120 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a little bit (approximately 7%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2408 (7%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3480 (17%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.