GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 9472 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be quite a bit (about 64%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19152 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 is much (about 173%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20768 (173%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.