GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. 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)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 51648 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be much (about 51%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 116%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (116%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can 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 the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.