GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be 80% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 32%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14640 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be a small bit (more or less 8%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (8%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.