GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600(320x5) Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 88 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (approximately 47%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31648 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39232 (144%)

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 max amount of information (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 speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.