GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (approximately 146%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43920 (146%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.