GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB will be a bit (approximately 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (10%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (30%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.