GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with a clock frequency of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (approximately 411%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 128160 (411%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (approximately 155%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32320 (155%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few 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.