In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 7850 Gigabyte OC 1GB Edition are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition.

The HD 7850 has a 135 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 460. This results in the HD 7850 providing 14.8 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 7850 has a 135 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the HD 7850 providing 4.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD 7850 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 460, and so the HD 7850 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 460.

The Radeon HD 7850 Gigabyte OC 1GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 7850 has 35.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the HD 7850 is noticeably better than the GTX 460.

The Radeon HD 7850 Gigabyte OC 1GB Edition has 1024 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition has 336. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 7850 is 783 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 514. The HD 7850 having 269 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 7850 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 460.

The HD 7850 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 460. This means that the HD 7850 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 460.

We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 7850 and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 460. The HD 7850 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 460. The difference is significant enough that the HD 7850 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 460.