In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire Toxic 1GB Edition are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Gainward 1GB Edition.

The HD 4890 has a 32 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 650 Ti, but the GTX 650 Ti has 24 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD 4890. As a result, the GTX 650 Ti exhibits a 21 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the HD 4890. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 4890 has a 32 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 650 Ti and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the HD 4890 providing 0.6 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 650 Ti was released over a year more recently than the HD 4890, and so the GTX 650 Ti is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 4890.

The Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire Toxic 1GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Gainward 1GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 4890 has 48 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 650 Ti, which means that the memory performance of the HD 4890 is noticeably better than the GTX 650 Ti.

The Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire Toxic 1GB Edition has 800 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Gainward 1GB Edition has 768. However, the actual shader performance of the HD 4890 is 538 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 650 Ti is 713. The GTX 650 Ti having 175 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the HD 4890 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The GTX 650 Ti transistor size technology is 27 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 4890. This means that the GTX 650 Ti is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 4890. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the GTX 650 Ti should consume less power than the HD 4890.

The Radeon HD 4890 Sapphire Toxic 1GB Edition requires 190 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Gainward 1GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 4890.