GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (approximately 251%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75392 (251%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (approximately 88%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.