GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a lot (more or less 38%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11472 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will be much (about 34%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4128 (34%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.