GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16896 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a bit (approximately 20%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (20%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.