GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised 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 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (about 33%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (about 33%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.