GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be 81% faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 103392 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a little bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9360 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (more or less 35%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6276 (35%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.