GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 9472 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be much (more or less 64%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19152 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be much (approximately 173%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.