GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 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 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (95%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is a bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (10%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.