GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be quite a bit (more or less 171%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64680 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 360 (2%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.