GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 is 32% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is quite a bit (approximately 46%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be quite a bit (about 144%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.