GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 173 Watts (1153%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 820M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 491%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56496 (491%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 846%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 820M, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24324 (846%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.