GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 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 4870 512MB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 280 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 26496 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be much (approximately 61%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18160 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (about 61%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7264 (61%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number 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 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.