GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (620%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a bit (about 17%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 940M. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4272 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 40%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 940M, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.