GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4890 2GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 19072 (18%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be quite a bit (about 23%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9152 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a lot (approximately 105%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16768 (105%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.