GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (approximately 65%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.