GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 52% faster than the GeForce GTX 570 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
	Difference: 78400 (52%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 37%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16080 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (22%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.