GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 will be 31% faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 31520 (31%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be a lot (about 77%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14792 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (approximately 153%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14680 (153%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.