GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9120 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is a small bit (about 18%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6008 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be a lot (more or less 52%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8280 (52%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.