GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (106%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is a bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12128 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12064 (50%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.