GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 52608 (42%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a small bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (about 110%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (110%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.