GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB will be much (about 28%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be a lot (about 30%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (30%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.