GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a lot (about 21%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be a lot (more or less 73%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (73%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.