GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be just a bit (more or less 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE should be much (approximately 73%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.