GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7770, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be just a bit (about 6%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be a lot (about 35%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7770, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (35%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.