GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 975 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 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 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is just a bit (more or less 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.