GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 870M should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 32448 (51%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (about 322%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80392 (322%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (about 126%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12584 (126%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.