GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is much (about 75%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14304 (119%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.