GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (more or less 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19408 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (209%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.