GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 560 should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3328 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be just a bit (more or less 13%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5360 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 will be quite a bit (approximately 62%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9920 (62%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.