GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which features a GPU core clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a bit (approximately 8%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be quite a bit (about 55%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (55%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.