GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 880M should be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M should be quite a bit (more or less 307%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92112 (307%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18528 (154%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.