GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 560 is 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12928 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be much (about 51%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (116%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 reach the max fill rate.