GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be a small bit (approximately 13%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3856 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is much (approximately 41%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4928 (41%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.