GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (about 146%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43920 (146%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 270%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32352 (270%)

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 transferred across 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 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.