GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 112%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42200 (112%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (48%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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