GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (169%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be 80% quicker than the GeForce GTX 880M overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M will be a lot (approximately 104%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62112 (104%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (27%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.