GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which has core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 SE, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (more or less 97%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be a bit (approximately 18%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (18%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.