GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 975 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB is 18% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 19072 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be quite a bit (approximately 23%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9152 (23%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16768 (105%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.