GeForce GTX 460 SE 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 RAM running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a little bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is a lot (more or less 55%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.