GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 570 overall. (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%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (about 22%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.