GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 3312 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be quite a bit (more or less 23%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6864 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.