GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4790, which features GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 SE is 6% quicker than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be quite a bit (more or less 63%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be quite a bit (more or less 117%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4790, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (117%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.