GeForce GT 1030 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 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is 134% faster than the GeForce GT 1030 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 66048 (134%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be much (approximately 35%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10480 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be quite a bit (about 69%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8240 (69%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.