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 set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units 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 theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (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 is much (approximately 32%) better at AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.