GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. 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 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be 3% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be a lot (approximately 23%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6864 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (approximately 34%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.