GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 320 Watts (1067%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 181248 (369%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (more or less 48%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19520 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3760 (19%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of 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.