GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (about 171%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53280 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 35%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (35%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred 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, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 maximum fill rate.