GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 should be just a bit (more or less 13%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3856 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.