GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 1060 uses a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1506 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 2000 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.