GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be a lot (about 251%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75392 (251%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (approximately 88%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10584 (88%)

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 moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.