GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be a little 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 should be a small bit (more or less 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the max fill rate.