GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should be 14% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16896 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a small bit (about 20%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (20%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.