GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 5668 (222%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 is 206% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 177600 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 213%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (more or less 83%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13400 (83%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.