GeForce 930M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 930M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 100800 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be quite a bit (more or less 35%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 930M. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7728 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4576 (62%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.