GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 18720 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be a small bit (more or less 13%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3992 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (approximately 102%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.