In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 6950 Gigabyte WindForce 3X OC 1GB Edition are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition.

The HD 6950 has a 105 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 460. This results in the HD 6950 providing 33.8 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 6950 has a 105 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 460 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the HD 6950 providing 3.3 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 6950 was released less than a year after the GTX 460, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The Radeon HD 6950 Gigabyte WindForce 3X 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 6950 has 41.6 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 460, which means that the memory performance of the HD 6950 is noticeably better than the GTX 460.

The Radeon HD 6950 Gigabyte WindForce 3X OC 1GB Edition has 1408 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition has 336. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 6950 is 612 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 460 is 514. The HD 6950 having 98 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 6950 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 460.

The Radeon HD 6950 Gigabyte WindForce 3X OC 1GB Edition requires 200 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 460 PNY 1GB OC Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6950 and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 460. The HD 6950 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 460. The difference is significant enough that the HD 6950 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 460.