GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is 71% quicker than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 45248 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be quite a bit (approximately 46%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (108%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.