GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (more or less 380%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 114128 (380%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a lot (about 501%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60064 (501%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.