GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 33792 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be much (approximately 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48432 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48288 (201%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.