GeForce GTX 960 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 runs at a speed of 975 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be much (about 80%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20064 (125%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.