GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7770 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be just a bit (about 6%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is much (more or less 35%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (35%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.