GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (275%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a little bit (more or less 17%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5040 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2016 (17%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.