GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 975 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be 95% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (95%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is a bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be just a bit (about 10%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (10%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.