GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 975 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 19072 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a lot (more or less 23%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9152 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is a lot (more or less 105%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16768 (105%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.