GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. 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)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 295, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108576 (94%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is much (about 207%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62160 (207%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is quite a bit (more or less 169%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20256 (169%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.