GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB has a core clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 460 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 5850 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 460 1GB	Radeon HD 5850
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	July 2010	September 30, 2009
Code Name	GF104	Cypress PRO
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.1 x16
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	675 MHz	725 MHz
Shader Speed	1350 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	1000 MHz
Unified Shaders	336	1440(288x5)
Texture Mapping Units	56	72
Render Output Units	32	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 3.2
Power (Max TDP)	160 watts	151 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	115200 MB/sec	128000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	37800 Mtexels/sec	52200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	21600 Mpixels/sec	23200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.