GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (106%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is a little bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12128 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (about 50%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12064 (50%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.