Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 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 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Geforce GTX 690 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 269312 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be a lot (approximately 681%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 204240 (681%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is a lot (about 388%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.