GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which features core speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 4G should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be quite a bit (approximately 187%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70840 (187%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9440 (44%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.