GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is a bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.