GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB makes use of a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1506 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1152 SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.