GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a lot (about 21%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.