GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 880M should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M is a lot (about 307%) more effective 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is the winner, 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.