GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 407 (19%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (56%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a small bit (more or less 13%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a lot (about 21%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2760 (21%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.