GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7770, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 7770 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be a lot (approximately 28%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is quite a bit (about 30%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (30%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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