GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 127808 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (about 125%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33292 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4576 (24%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.