GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 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)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 260 Watts (289%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be 118% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 124672 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a lot (more or less 22%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10848 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8768 (37%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.