GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which features core clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (approximately 46%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17240 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.