Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. 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)

Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 690 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
	Difference: 154112 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit (approximately 290%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 174240 (290%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is quite a bit (more or less 144%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34560 (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.

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 transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. 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 memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.