GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40704 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be a lot (more or less 32%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (23%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.