GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 880M should theoretically be a bit superior to 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 quite a bit (more or less 307%) more effective at anisotropic 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by far. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's 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 higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.