GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency 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 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980M should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (more or less 232%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69648 (232%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (approximately 454%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54432 (454%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.