Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 670 will be 54% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general, because of 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 is much (approximately 156%) better at texture 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 670 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.