GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 114 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 88704 (63%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a lot (about 25%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4736 (25%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.