GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (322%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (95%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a lot (more or less 91%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36512 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is much (about 25%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3248 (25%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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.