Why does ATI have such good specs compared to Nvidia?

This is probably a common question, but I couldn't find an answer. Why are ATI's video card specs so much better than Nvidia's, but not any better? There are ATI cards with up to 800 stream processors, but Nvidia only has up to 240 stream processors. ATI cards that can have up to GDDR5 3600Mhz, but Nvidia cards only have up to GDDR3 2400Mhz. ATI also seems to usually have more vram on their cards. Why are ATI cards roughly equal to Nvidia cards?

Same reason Pentium 4s weren't / aren't the fastest CPUs in the world.

Technical specifications are meaningless when you're comparing two entirely different architectures.

Actually, there's one anomoly:
Powercolor HD 4850 2GB
Just when you thought the 8500GT 1GB was rediculous...

Well that would be like the GF9800GTS-2GB anomalie, it's not the standard card, in the same way the Quadro FX5800 4GB isn't.

Anywhoo, for the sake of this discussion as to the differences between the two top gaming card they are 1GB each, but there are of coure the silly other things out there too, but for the HD4870 and GTX280, they're equal in size, just very different in implementation.

due to the higher latencies of ddr4 you'll find its less than useless

Well first of all you need to take up die space to support it, and there's not enough room on a G200 die for the TMDS & RAMDACs, so GDDR4/5 support was likely not of high importance once they decided on the 512bit route.

GDDR4/5 isn't important on it's own, and it's not anymore latency prone than the equivalent GDDR3, it's a question of use and needs.

GDDR4 was expensive, and GDDR5 was unproven when they designed their G200, ATi had pushed the memory envelope since the R9800Pro DDRII days, and nV's last push was the failed FX5800.

There are reasons to not use GDDR4, but GDDR5 would've been a good choice, however they may not have known or expected that.

With GDDR3 deadending around the 1200Mhz mark, the future of GDDR5 is the way to go, but right now it's about bandwidth not just raw speed.
If you think of how it works, the GDDR5 on the HD4870 actually runs at slower speeds than the GDDR3 on many GTX260 (900 vs 1000 Mhz) but it's how one is quad pumped not just DDR, and the other is 448bit vs 256bit that play a big role in the equation.

Specs on their own mean little, it's how they add up and in what situation that matters most.

That's why it's best to look at the initial launches of the R600 and G80 and see how the SPUs compare (not just composition/#, but that one is clocked much faster), and then take note that you also need other components, like TMUs and ROPs as well a memory interface properties to make up performance in an app for a specific card.

There is no easy answer other than to reasearch the architecture.

Also think of this, nV may outperform per SPU or some other measure, but per mm of silicon the ATi cards are way out front. So what's important to a producer and consumer (if mm = yield = cost/price)?

You mean GDDR6.

We haven't yet reached DDR4.

Eh?

*bangs head off of desk*

Read it again and think about your posts.

Gee, I wonder what the G is?