GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 45248 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be much (about 25%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (25%)

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 4850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (108%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.