GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (44%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be a bit (approximately 6%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a little bit (approximately 1%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 200 (1%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.