GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 148 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 118512 (106%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be quite a bit (about 45%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18528 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (49%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.