GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108576 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a lot (approximately 207%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62160 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is much (more or less 169%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20256 (169%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.