GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be 33% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be a lot (approximately 26%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (35%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.