GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4790, which has core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 is 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be much (more or less 449%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86192 (449%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (about 135%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12984 (135%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.