GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should in theory perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is a lot (more or less 23%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6864 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (approximately 34%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that 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 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.