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GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB 160 Watts
Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be much (about 26%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB 37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7800 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB 21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 9600 (80%)

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

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GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 460 1GB Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year July 2010 Jun 25, 2008
Code Name GF104 RV770 XT
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 675 MHz 750 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 160 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 37800 Mtexels/sec 30000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 21600 Mpixels/sec 12000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 336 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 56 40
Render Output Units 32 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1950 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

One Response to “GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB”
Mike says:

When will we see the addition of the new AMD/Radeon 7000 series added as well as the new NVidia 600 series?

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