GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up 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 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9120 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is a small bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6008 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (approximately 52%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8280 (52%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.