GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 880M should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is much (approximately 307%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92112 (307%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.