Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Geforce GTX 690 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 269312 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit (approximately 681%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 204240 (681%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is a lot (approximately 388%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46560 (388%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.