GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a core clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, 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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 5667 (109%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
	Difference: 91 (53%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (46%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 98%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54160 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (about 144%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7850, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39680 (144%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.