GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 9472 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be quite a bit (approximately 64%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19152 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be much (more or less 173%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.