GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (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 moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.