GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 SE is 13% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (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%) more effective at anisotropic 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 113%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.