GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 33792 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 81%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48432 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB will be much (about 201%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48288 (201%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 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 max fill rate.