GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which has core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should be a small bit (approximately 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be just a bit (approximately 1%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 200 (1%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.