GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 6% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is just a bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 SE is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (73%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.