GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run 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 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be quite a bit (more or less 46%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13840 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5536 (46%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.