GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is 30% quicker than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (30%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (more or less 85%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33920 (85%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.