GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which has a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) will be a lot (approximately 90%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (117%)

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 in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.