Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 690 will be 234% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 269312 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be quite a bit (more or less 681%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 204240 (681%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 reach the maximum fill rate.