GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (78%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (approximately 80%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be much (more or less 68%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (68%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.