GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this 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)

GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 295 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 6624 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is quite a bit (approximately 54%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32160 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8256 (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.

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.