GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M385X should be 11% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is a lot (about 63%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23800 (63%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (9%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.