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GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 SE uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 850 MHz on this particular model. It features 288 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (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 should be a bit (more or less 18%) more effective at 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

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be much (more or less 27%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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

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GeForce GTX 460 SE

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 SE Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year November 2010 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name GF104 R680
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 650 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3400 MHz 2252 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 108800 MB/sec 144128 MB/sec
Texel Rate 31200 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20800 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 288 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 48 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 32 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR4
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1950 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 460 SE

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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