GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 11904 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 32%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.