GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 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)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 118512 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 45%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18528 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (49%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.