GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be 47% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40704 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a lot (approximately 32%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (23%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.