GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that 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 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

GeForce GTX 260		31 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		20 FPS
	Difference: 11 FPS (55%)

F.E.A.R. 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Unknown (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		78 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		60 FPS
	Difference: 18 FPS (30%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce GTX 260		74 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		71 FPS
	Difference: 3 FPS (4%)

Far Cry 2

Settings:	Very High Qualty
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7-920,3 x 2 GB Ram,Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit SP1 (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		61 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		53 FPS
	Difference: 8 FPS (15%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		78 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		74 FPS
	Difference: 4 FPS (5%)

Left4Dead 2

Settings:	Very High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		77 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		69 FPS
	Difference: 8 FPS (12%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		96 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		91 FPS
	Difference: 5 FPS (5%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		55 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		34 FPS
	Difference: 21 FPS (62%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		24 FPS
	Difference: 6 FPS (25%)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

GeForce GTX 260		47 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		36 FPS
	Difference: 11 FPS (31%)

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Radeon HD 4870 512MB wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB wins overall, by 45 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		602 FPS
GeForce GTX 260		557 FPS
	Difference: 45 FPS (8%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (more or less 23%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6864 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is quite a bit (about 34%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, 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 high resolutions.

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