GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has GPU clock speed of 1038 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (approximately 164%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61848 (164%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44832 (208%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.