GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be 44% quicker than the GeForce GTX 650 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 35200 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be a little bit (more or less 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3856 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4928 (41%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few 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.