GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 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 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M is 11% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (about 232%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69648 (232%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (more or less 454%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54432 (454%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.