GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 960, which features a clock frequency of 1127 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960 is 3% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (approximately 131%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40928 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15264 (73%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.