Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units 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

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is much (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 will be quite a bit (about 388%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.