GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (about 22%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is a lot (more or less 22%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2624 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied 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 a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.