GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 275 Watts (367%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be much better than 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 23%) better at AF 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 (approximately 85%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.