GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (more or less 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (about 144%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17280 (144%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.