GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9120 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a small bit (approximately 18%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6008 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be much (about 52%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8280 (52%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.