GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 135%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (37%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.