GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 960, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 5070 (198%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 960 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be much (about 91%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34328 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is a lot (approximately 123%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19864 (123%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.