GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31520 (31%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is much (more or less 77%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14792 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (about 153%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14680 (153%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.