GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be much (about 46%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17240 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be a lot (more or less 27%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5920 (27%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.