GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce GTX 650 features a GPU clock speed of 1058 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory is set to run at 1250 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 650 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 7870 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 650	Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	September 2012	March 2012
Code Name	GK107	Pitcairn XT
Fab Process	28 nm	28 nm
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	1058 MHz	1000 MHz
Shader Speed	1058 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective)	1200 MHz (4800 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders	384	1280
Texture Mapping Units	32	80
Render Output Units	16	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11.1	DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.3	OpenGL 4.2
Power (Max TDP)	64 watts	175 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	80000 MB/sec	153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	33856 Mtexels/sec	80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	16928 Mpixels/sec	32000 Mpixels/sec

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.