GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 975 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 is 7% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9120 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is a small bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6008 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.