GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 4GB, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 165376 (258%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (more or less 111%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84768 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 4GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23088 (181%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.