GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 570, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be much (about 46%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be quite a bit (more or less 144%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.