GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (approximately 65%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19408 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (approximately 209%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.