GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4730, which features a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4730 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is much (more or less 69%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15400 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be a lot (about 286%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (286%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the video 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 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.