GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 975 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 9%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3136 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is a bit (about 1%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past 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 DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.