GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be 8% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be a lot (more or less 35%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes 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. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.