GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 1GB should be 6% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be much (about 21%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is much (more or less 73%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.