GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, 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 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be 3% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be a lot (about 140%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.