GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is quite a bit (about 80%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is quite a bit (approximately 68%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (68%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.