GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which features core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 148800 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 213%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80600 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (37%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.