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GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 280 features clock speeds of 602 MHz on the GPU, and 1107 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 240 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB 150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280 236 Watts
Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should be 23% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280 141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 26496 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (approximately 61%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280 48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 18160 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280 19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7264 (61%)

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

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 280 Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year June 17, 2008 Jun 25, 2008
Code Name G200 RV770 XT
Memory 1024 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 602 MHz 750 MHz
Memory Speed 2214 MHz 3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 236 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 141696 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 48160 Mtexels/sec 30000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19264 Mpixels/sec 12000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 240 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 80 40
Render Output Units 32 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 512-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1400 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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