GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (approximately 33%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 33%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (33%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.