GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (more or less 22%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.