GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be much (about 97%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 get to the max fill rate.