GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 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 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 45248 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 46%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be a lot (approximately 108%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.