GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be 6% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is a small bit (about 4%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is quite a bit (about 73%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (73%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.