GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 975 MHz on this card. 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16896 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a little bit (about 20%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8160 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be a bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3264 (20%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends 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.