Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features 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 features 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 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 680 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77056 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (approximately 329%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98768 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20192 (168%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.