GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 960		7627 points
Radeon HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1397 (22%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 18 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a little bit (about 11%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is a small bit (more or less 13%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4064 (13%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.