GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 880M should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is quite a bit (about 307%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92112 (307%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18528 (154%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This 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 graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.