GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 38016 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a lot (approximately 21%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10592 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (approximately 54%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13056 (54%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.