GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 38016 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (more or less 21%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10592 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13056 (54%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.