GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 11904 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 32%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be just a bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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