GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 600 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4790 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (about 419%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80448 (419%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (about 592%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56832 (592%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 colour ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends 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 maximum fill rate.