GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a little bit (about 8%) more effective at AF 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is the winner, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.