GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (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 just a bit (more or less 12%) more effective at 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 will be a lot (approximately 62%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.