GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be 47% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40704 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 32%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.