GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific 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)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a lot (approximately 31%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9168 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be quite a bit (about 22%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (22%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.