GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 560 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3328 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be a little bit (about 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5360 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9920 (62%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.