GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a lot (about 351%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109600 (351%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (146%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.