GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (approximately 80%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be much (more or less 26%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (26%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.