GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (141%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (more or less 82%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49200 (82%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (about 180%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (180%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.