GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (approximately 80%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32128 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (approximately 125%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.