GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 965M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a lot (about 101%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30416 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be quite a bit (approximately 152%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18208 (152%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated 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 graphics 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 video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.