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GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 comes with a clock frequency of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 999 MHz. It also uses a 448-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is made up of 216 SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 28 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, 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 along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 118512 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 45%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18528 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (49%)

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

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GeForce GTX 260 Core 216

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GTX 260 Core 216	Radeon HD 4870 X2
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	September 16, 2008	Aug 12, 2008
Code Name	G200	R700
Memory	896 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	576 MHz	750 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1998 MHz	3600 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP)	202 watts	350 watts
Bandwidth	111888 MB/sec	230400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	41472 Mtexels/sec	60000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16128 Mpixels/sec	24000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	216	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	72	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	28	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	448-bit	256-bit (x2)
Fab Process	65 nm	55 nm
Transistors	1400 million	956 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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