GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is quite a bit (approximately 105%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19400 (105%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (135%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.