GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (about 251%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75392 (251%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is quite a bit (approximately 88%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10584 (88%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.