GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (more or less 251%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75392 (251%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (about 88%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10584 (88%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the max fill rate.