GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which features GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4790, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be much (approximately 97%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 should be much (about 69%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (69%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.