GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be a lot (approximately 51%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is quite a bit (about 116%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.