GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a frequency of 1126 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is 32% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 35328 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a small bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (27%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a 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 speed of the card. 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.