GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 in theory be a lot 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 should be a lot (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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, and very much so. (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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.