GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 285 Watts (438%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 582%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (582%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (about 445%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.