GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should be 54% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 67584 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 24%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9408 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21056 (132%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.