In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 EVGA SuperSC ACX 2.0+ 2GB Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition.

The GTX 960 has a 629 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 470. This results in the GTX 960 providing 45.5 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 960 has a 629 MHz higher core clock speed but 8 fewer Render Output Units than the GTX 470. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the GTX 960 manages to provide 14.9 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 960 was released over three years more recently than the GTX 470, and so the GTX 960 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the GTX 470 when running the latest games.

The GTX 960 has 768 MB more video memory than the GTX 470, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 960 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 470 has 23.8 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 960, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 470 is slightly better than the GTX 960.

The GeForce GTX 960 EVGA SuperSC ACX 2.0+ 2GB Edition has 1024 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition has 448. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 960 is 1855 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 470 is 582. The GTX 960 having 1273 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 960 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 470.

The GTX 960 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 470. This means that the GTX 960 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 470.

The GeForce GTX 960 EVGA SuperSC ACX 2.0+ 2GB Edition requires 120 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition requires 215 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the GTX 960 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 470. The GTX 470 requires 95 Watts more than the GTX 960 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 470 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 960.