GeForce 830M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (1300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 216000 (1500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be much (approximately 264%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43536 (264%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be a lot (approximately 192%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 830M, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15768 (192%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.