GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 112% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be quite a bit (about 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a little bit (about 15%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.