GeForce GTX 960 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 set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 975 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (approximately 80%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (approximately 125%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20064 (125%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.