Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 20% quicker than the Geforce GTX 680 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (more or less 115%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68768 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8192 (34%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.