GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units 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

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (more or less 33%) faster with regards to 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 is quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.