GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a small bit (about 6%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (35%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.