GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti should be quite a bit (approximately 75%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22608 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is quite a bit (more or less 119%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14304 (119%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.