GeForce GTX 465 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 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. 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)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 465 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 12608 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3292 (12%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 465 should be a lot (about 62%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (62%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.