GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
	Difference: 82816 (256%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is much (about 200%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (200%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7000 (140%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.