Does opengl matter 460-fermi vs 550TI-fermi

[WINTERLORD]

hi, i was wondering im looking at a 460 fermi card from nvidia and a 550TI card from nvidia. i know the reviews here on toms say the 460fermi is a little faster then the 550TI however i was wondering about the little option that says OpenGl

the 550 has 4.2 and the older 460 has 4.0opengl

does this openGl have anythiong to do with how nice the graphics and color will look?

thanks
winter

 

[Supernova1138]

OpenGL is an api like DirectX used by some applications to handle graphics processing. The 550 being the newer card has support for the latest version OpenGL 4.2, while the 460 only supports up to 4.0. Generally speaking this probably will not effect the quality of your graphics, colour will not be affected, and you would only see an advantage in quality if you have any applications that would fully support OpenGL 4.2. Games generally tend to favour DirectX so if your main use for the card is gaming you probably won't see any difference in quality unless you are playing one of the relatively few titles that uses OpenGL, and a pretty new one at that, I'm not sure if there are any games out there that fully utilize OpenGL 4.2