GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It 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 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 is 16% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 18720 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a little bit (about 13%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3992 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be quite a bit (more or less 102%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12280 (102%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.