GeForce GTX 650 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 650 Ti		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650 Ti		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti will be much (more or less 98%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		59392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29392 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650 Ti		14848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2848 (24%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.