Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be a small bit better than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (more or less 115%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.