GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 80%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (more or less 26%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (26%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.