In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics 4600 Desktop are massively better than the Intel HD Graphics 2000 Desktop.

The Graphics 2000 has a 450 MHz higher core clock speed than the Graphics 4600, but the Graphics 4600 has 3 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics 2000. As a result, the Graphics 4600 exhibits a 0.7 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the Graphics 2000. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The Graphics 2000 has a 450 MHz higher core clock speed but 1 fewer Render Output Units than the Graphics 4600. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the Graphics 2000 manages to provide 0.1 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 Graphics 4600 was released over a year more recently than the Graphics 2000, and so the Graphics 4600 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the Graphics 2000.

The HD Graphics 2000 Desktop and the HD Graphics 4600 Desktop have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The Graphics 4600 has 4.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the Graphics 2000, which means that the memory performance of the Graphics 4600 is marginally better than the Graphics 2000.

The HD Graphics 2000 Desktop has 6 Shader Processing Units and the HD Graphics 4600 Desktop has 20. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics 2000 is 32 and the actual shader performance of the Graphics 4600 is 100. The Graphics 4600 having 68 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the Graphics 4600 delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Graphics 2000.

The Graphics 4600 transistor size technology is 10 nm (nanometers) smaller than the Graphics 2000. This means that the Graphics 4600 is expected to run very slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the Graphics 2000.

The HD Graphics 2000 Desktop requires 95 Watts to run and the HD Graphics 4600 Desktop requires 88 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 2000 and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 4600. The Graphics 2000 requires 7 Watts more than the Graphics 4600 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the Graphics 2000 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the Graphics 4600.