Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (approximately 115%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68768 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 680 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8192 (34%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.