GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a lot (about 46%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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