GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 78% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 80%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, and very much so. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.