GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It 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)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is 81% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 51648 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (about 51%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution 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 4850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the maximum fill rate.