GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 285, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 918 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 285 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be quite a bit (approximately 230%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71616 (230%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8576 (41%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.