In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Zotac OC Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 SLI.

The GTX 780 has a 266 MHz higher core clock speed and 80 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 460. This results in the GTX 780 providing 105.1 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 780 has a 266 MHz higher core clock speed but 16 fewer Render Output Units than the GTX 460. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the GTX 780 manages to provide 2 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 780 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 460, and so the GTX 780 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 460.

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 780 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 780 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 780 has 58 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 780 is much better than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 780 Zotac OC Edition has 2304 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 460 SLI has 672. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 780 is 2288 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 907. The GTX 780 having 1381 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 780 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 460.

The GTX 780 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 460. This means that the GTX 780 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 460.

The GeForce GTX 780 Zotac OC Edition requires 250 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 780 and a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 460. The GTX 460 requires 130 Watts more than the GTX 780 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 780.