GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 570 will be 22% faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be just a bit (approximately 10%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (more or less 83%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (83%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.