GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a lot (about 97%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.