In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon R7 260X v3 Gigabyte OC Rev. 3.0 2GB Edition are very slightly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition.

The R7 260X has a 423 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GTX 460. This results in the R7 260X providing 23.7 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 R7 260X has a 423 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460, but the GTX 460 has 16 more Render Output Units than the R7 260X. As a result, the GTX 460 exhibits a 5.5 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the R7 260X. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The R7 260X was released over three years more recently than the GTX 460, and so the R7 260X is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the GTX 460 when running the latest games.

The R7 260X has 1024 MB more video memory than the GTX 460, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, the overall memory performance is about the same.

The GTX 460 has 38.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the R7 260X, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 460 is noticeably better than the R7 260X.

The Radeon R7 260X v3 Gigabyte OC Rev. 3.0 2GB Edition has 896 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition has 336. However, the actual shader performance of the R7 260X is 905 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 514. The R7 260X having 391 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the GTX 460 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The R7 260X transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 460. This means that the R7 260X is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 460. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the R7 260X should consume less power than the GTX 460.

The Radeon R7 260X v3 Gigabyte OC Rev. 3.0 2GB Edition requires 85 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the R7 260X and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 460. The two GPUs have been recommended a PSU with the same amount of wattage. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.