GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 80% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980M in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (more or less 66%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39648 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42432 (177%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.