GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 275 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 11808 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 will be much (about 69%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20640 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 275 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5724 (48%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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