GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (approximately 38%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (about 38%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.