Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 670 is 54% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67200 (54%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 will be a lot (about 156%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62480 (156%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be much (more or less 83%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (83%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.