GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 268800 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (about 323%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122200 (323%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (196%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied in one 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.