GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features a clock frequency of 941 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (approximately 190%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68992 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1784 (9%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 get to the max fill rate.