GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 148800 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (more or less 213%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80600 (213%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (about 37%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.