GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is a lot (approximately 22%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (about 22%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.