GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 975 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 295 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 98976 (79%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be much (approximately 130%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52160 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be much (approximately 102%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16256 (102%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.