GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 29184 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be much (more or less 123%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36816 (123%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21408 (178%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.