GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 975 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 is 22% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be a bit (about 10%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (83%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per 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 number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.