GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (about 77%) better at 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 should be much (about 153%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 reach the maximum fill rate.