GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (24%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (about 62%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (38%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 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 get to the maximum fill rate.