GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be 620% quicker than the GeForce 940M in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (620%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a bit (about 17%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 940M. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4272 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 40%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 940M, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3424 (40%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.