GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (about 140%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (about 200%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48064 (200%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.