GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be much (approximately 140%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24064 (201%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.