GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 140%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (more or less 200%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48064 (200%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.