GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 26496 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (more or less 61%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18160 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7264 (61%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.