GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (more or less 140%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42128 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is much (approximately 201%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.