GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 650		2263 points
	Difference: 3967 (175%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (92%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (more or less 136%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46144 (136%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15072 (89%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.