GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 275 Watts (367%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (more or less 23%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (about 85%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20352 (85%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.