GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 570 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 should be a bit (about 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.