GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs 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 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be 20% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (about 146%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43920 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 per 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.