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GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm has core speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 216 SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 171 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2 350 Watts
Difference: 179 Watts (105%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 111888 MB/sec
Difference: 118512 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (about 45%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 41472 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 18528 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 16128 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7872 (49%)

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

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GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm Radeon HD 4870 X2
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year December 22, 2008 Aug 12, 2008
Code Name G200b R700
Memory 896 MB 1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed 576 MHz 750 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1998 MHz 3600 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 171 watts 350 watts
Bandwidth 111888 MB/sec 230400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 41472 Mtexels/sec 60000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16128 Mpixels/sec 24000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 216 800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 72 40 (x2)
Render Output Units 28 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 448-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 1400 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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