GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 80% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980M overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (about 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39648 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (more or less 177%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42432 (177%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.