GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 143% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 155200 (143%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 279%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87200 (279%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (more or less 42%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (42%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.