GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is quite a bit (approximately 22%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2624 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.