GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 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)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is quite a bit (more or less 38%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11472 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4128 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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 reach the max fill rate.