GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 26%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (80%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.