GeForce GTX 1070 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1070		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1070 is 14% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be much (more or less 201%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		180720 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 120720 (201%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1070 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		96384 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 72384 (302%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.