GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically be quite a bit better than 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) should be a bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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) should be a lot (approximately 55%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.