In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon HD 7770 Sapphire Edition.

The HD 7770 has a 235 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460, but the GTX 460 has 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 7770. As a result, the GTX 460 exhibits a 2.8 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the HD 7770. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 7770 has a 235 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460, but the GTX 460 has 16 more Render Output Units than the HD 7770. As a result, the GTX 460 exhibits a 8.5 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the HD 7770. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD 7770 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 460, and so the HD 7770 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 Radeon HD 7770 Sapphire 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 460 has 46.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the HD 7770, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 460 is noticeably better than the HD 7770.

The GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition has 336 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 7770 Sapphire Edition has 640. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 514 and the actual shader performance of the HD 7770 is 544. The HD 7770 having 30 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the GTX 460 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The HD 7770 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 460. This means that the HD 7770 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 460.

The Radeon HD 7770 Sapphire Edition requires 80 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 HD 7770. The HD 7770 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 460. The difference is significant enough that the HD 7770 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 460.