GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be 163% quicker than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 203520 (163%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be much (approximately 94%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37696 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42272 (264%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.