GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should perform a lot 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 much (about 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

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (about 48%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.