GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 SE uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 850 MHz on this model. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 460 SE Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4870 X2 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 460 SE	Radeon HD 4870 X2
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	November 2010	Aug 12, 2008
Code Name	GF104	R700
Fab Process	40 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	650 MHz	750 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1300 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	850 MHz (3400 MHz effective)	900 MHz (3600 MHz effective) (x2)
Unified Shaders	288	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	48	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	32	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	150 watts	350 watts
Shader Model	5.0	4.1
Bandwidth	108800 MB/sec	230400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	31200 Mtexels/sec	60000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	20800 Mpixels/sec	24000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.