GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 is 220% quicker than the GeForce GTX 950M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (220%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is much (about 90%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17360 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is superior to the Radeon HD 4790, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5024 (52%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.