GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 12912 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be just a bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1472 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.