In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 SLI.

The GTX 480 has a 26 MHz higher core clock speed and 68 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 460. This results in the GTX 480 providing 50.6 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 480 has a 26 MHz higher core clock speed and 80 more Render Output Units than the GTX 460. This results in the GTX 480 providing 57.7 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 460 was released less than a year after the GTX 480, 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 GTX 480 has 1024 MB more video memory than the GTX 460, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 480 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 480 has 124.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 480 is massively better than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI has 1440 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI has 672. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 480 is 2019 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 907. The GTX 480 having 1112 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 480 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI requires 750 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI requires 380 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 1000 Watts for the GTX 480 and a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 460. The GTX 480 requires 370 Watts more than the GTX 460 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 480 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 460.