GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 570 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be much (more or less 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be a lot (more or less 144%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17280 (144%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.