GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 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 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (76%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is much (about 185%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (185%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA 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 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (42%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, HDR 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.