GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

(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 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a little bit (approximately 4%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be a lot (about 73%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.