GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28992 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (approximately 161%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48400 (161%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11520 (96%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.