GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 240 Watts (218%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be much (approximately 76%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45392 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a little bit (approximately 6%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 870M, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1416 (6%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 could 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 colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.