GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 is 178% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 204800 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (more or less 322%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 121560 (322%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31520 (146%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.