GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 975 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be much (approximately 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33920 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be much (approximately 177%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28352 (177%)

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 one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.