GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which has core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is 8% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (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 should be a bit (approximately 6%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be much (approximately 35%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 reach the max fill rate.