GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40704 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 32%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a lot (approximately 23%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.