GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has a core clock speed of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (about 137%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42720 (137%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (approximately 113%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23552 (113%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.