GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 960M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a lot (about 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13840 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.