GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 9472 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be a lot (approximately 64%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19152 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20768 (173%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.