GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (more or less 171%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53280 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.