GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features 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 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (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 AF 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.