Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77056 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be quite a bit (approximately 329%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98768 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.