GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7990, which comes with core clock speeds of 950 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 460800 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be a lot (approximately 543%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 205400 (543%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (181%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.