GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 48 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 4963 (194%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970M should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 96%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36120 (96%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28152 (174%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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