GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run 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 260		182 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 168 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (about 63%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23136 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 49%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.