GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 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)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 51648 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 51%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (116%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.