GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be quite a bit (approximately 90%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 117%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4790, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (117%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.