GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 26496 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (approximately 61%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18160 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a lot (more or less 61%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.