In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 SLI are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 SLI.

The GTX 560 has a 135 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GTX 460. This results in the GTX 560 providing 15.1 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 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 providing 8.6 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 was released less than a year after the GTX 460, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GeForce GTX 560 SLI and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI 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 has 25.9 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 560 is slightly better than the GTX 460.

Both the GeForce GTX 560 SLI and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI have 672 Shader Processing Units. While the two GPUs have the same number of SPUs, the actual performance delivered by the GTX 560 is 1089 and by the GTX 460 is 907. Knowing that the shader performance of the GTX 560 is superior, it is not necessary to examine the GPUs' respective Texture and Pixel Fill Rates.

The GeForce GTX 560 SLI requires 300 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI requires 380 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 560 and a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 460. The GTX 460 requires 80 Watts more than the GTX 560 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 460 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 560.