GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 52992 (30%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (more or less 43%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18000 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (40%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.