GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is 3% quicker than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3456 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be quite a bit (approximately 32%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12608 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be quite a bit (about 64%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10304 (64%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.