GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 22208 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13292 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3424 (21%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.