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GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 SE uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this specific model. It features 288 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE 150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 135% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE 108800 MB/sec
Difference: 147200 (135%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (about 644%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE 31200 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 200800 (644%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE 20800 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 72000 (346%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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GeForce GTX 460 SE

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 SE Radeon HD 5970
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year November 2010 November 2009
Code Name GF104 Hemlock XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 650 MHz 725 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3400 MHz 4000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 294 watts
Bandwidth 108800 MB/sec 256000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 31200 Mtexels/sec 232000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20800 Mpixels/sec 92800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 288 1600 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 48 160 (x2)
Render Output Units 32 64 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 1950 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 460 SE

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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