GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 465		200 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 12608 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a small bit (approximately 12%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3292 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 465 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (62%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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