GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with core speeds of 830 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 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 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 is 178% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 204800 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (about 322%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 121560 (322%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		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: Memory 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. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.