GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (about 264%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79200 (264%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55200 (460%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.