GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (more or less 140%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24064 (201%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.