GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (approximately 232%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69648 (232%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54432 (454%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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