GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 975 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 570 is 22% quicker than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a little bit (approximately 10%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (83%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.