GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 18720 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a small bit (about 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3992 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12280 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.