GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which makes use of 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 specific model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 is 33% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (more or less 80%) better at anisotropic 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, by far. (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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.