GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4790, which has a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 97%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18600 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.