GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 120%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43600 (120%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (54%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.