GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 80%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30200 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 26%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (26%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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