GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 870M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 941 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 1120 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (85%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (about 151%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63392 (151%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11016 (49%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.