GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 925 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (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 will be much (approximately 135%) better at AF 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 screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.