GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (about 59%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (11%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.