GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9120 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should be a bit (more or less 18%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6008 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is much (more or less 52%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8280 (52%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.