GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (89%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is a lot (more or less 39%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be quite a bit (approximately 271%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4730, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (271%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 reach the max fill rate.