GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 18720 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be just a bit (about 13%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3992 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12280 (102%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.