GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		210 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 should be a lot (about 37%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10992 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17280 (144%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 maximum fill rate.