GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a little bit (approximately 6%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (35%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result 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 in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.