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GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) 108800 MB/sec
Difference: 35328 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be a lot (about 38%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) 36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 10000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) 20800 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5600 (27%)

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

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GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year October 2010 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name GF104 R680
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 650 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3400 MHz 2252 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 108800 MB/sec 144128 MB/sec
Texel Rate 36400 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 20800 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 336 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 56 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 32 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR4
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1950 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out 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 DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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