GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X is 39% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (more or less 145%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54744 (145%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (7%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.