In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB Edition are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition.

The GTX 560 Ti has a 135 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 460. This results in the GTX 560 Ti providing 14.8 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 560 Ti has a 135 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 560 Ti providing 4.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 560 Ti was released over a year more recently than the GTX 460, and so the GTX 560 Ti is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition and the GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GTX 560 Ti has 16 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 560 Ti is slightly better than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition has 336 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB Edition has 384. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 514 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 560 Ti is 691. The GTX 560 Ti having 177 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 560 Ti delivers a noticeably smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB Edition requires 180 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GTX 460. We would recommend a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 460 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 560 Ti. The GTX 560 Ti has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 460. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 560 Ti may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 460.