GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (about 252%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91600 (252%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (approximately 146%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.