GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980M will be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (more or less 232%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69648 (232%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends 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.