GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 62208 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot (more or less 40%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (180%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.